*     OCT  23 1922      * 


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BX    4810    .D8    1922 

Duncan,  W.  Wofford  T.  1869 

Our  Protestant  heritage 


Our  Protestant 
Heritage 


THREE  SERMONS  BY 

W.  WOFFORD  T.  DUNCAN 


AT 

EMORY  METHODIST  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

PITTSBURGH,  PENNSYLVANIA 


THE  METHODIST  BOOK  CONCERN 
NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1922,  by 
W.  WOFFORD  T.  DUNCAN 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


TO  MY  OLD  FRIENDS  WHO  CONSTITUTED 
THE  CONGREGATIONS  IN  THREE 
CHURCHES  TO  WHICH  I  HAVE  GIVEN 
TWENTY  YEARS  OP  HAPPY  SERVICE, 
FIRST  CHURCH,  SOUTH  NORWALK,  CON- 
NECTICUT;   SAINT    John's,    new     ro- 

CHELLE,  NEW  YORK,  AND  JANES  CHURCH, 
BROOKLYN;  AND  TO  MY  NEW  FRIENDS, 
THE  PEOPLE  OF  EMORY  CHURCH,  PITTS- 
BURGH, FOR  WHOM  THESE  SERMONS 
WERE  PREPARED,  THIS  LITTLE  VOLUIVIE 
IS   GRATEFULLY   DEDICATED. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  Intellectual  Heritage  of 
Protestantism 11 

The  Moral  Heritage   of   Protes- 
tantism       46 

The  Spiritual  Heritage  of  Protes- 
tantism       81 


ANNOUNCEMENT 

These  sermons  were  suggested  by  the 
publication  of  sixty-five  paid  advertisements 
in  Pittsburgh  daily  newspapers  announcing 
Roman  Catholic  views  of  Christianity  and 
the  church  and  discussing  questions  in  dis- 
pute between  Romanism  and  Protestant- 
ism. Protestant  rebuttal  by  the  same 
method  of  paid  advertising  was,  to  a  limited 
extent,  and  after  great  hesitancy,  published 
by  one  newspaper  and  refused  by  another, 
that  other  also  discontinuing  the  Roman 
Catholic  advertisements  the  moment  Prot- 
estants attempted  reply.  The  Protestant 
people  were  greatly  interested  and  an  un- 
usual opportunity  was  thus  afforded  the 
ministers  to  present  to  their  own  people 
Protestant  doctrines  and  ecclesiastical  view- 
points which  at  another  time  would  seem 
tame  or  academic.  Believing  in  the  principle 
that  the  moment  of  interested  attention 
should   be  seized   for  the  impartation   of 


8  ANNOUNCEMENT 

knowledge,  many  pastors  have  embraced 
the  opportunity  to  clarify  the  thinking  of 
their  own  people  and  such  Roman  Catholics 
as  might  attend,  by  the  emphasis  of  Protes- 
tant fundamentals  without  either  rabid 
denunciation  or  timid  apology. 

The  following  statement  of  purpose  was 
used  to  announce  this  series: 
Our  Roman  Catholic  Friends  have  made 
necessary  this  series.  They  have  earnestly 
and  publicly  proclaimed  in  Pittsburgh 
during  recent  weeks  that  Protestantism 
is  not  scripturally  nor  rationally  sound. 
It  is  their  privilege  to  express  their  honest 
convictions,  but  such  expression  chal- 
lenges Protestantism  to  reply.  The  re- 
sponsibility for  some  reply  is  with  them. 
To  ignore  the  challenge  is  to  admit 
Protestantism  to  be  what  they  think  it  is. 
We  gladly  embrace  the  opportunity  they 
furnish  to  strengthen  the  faith  of  Protes- 
tants, for  Protestantism  flourishes  on  full, 
open,  honest,  and  friendly  discussion. 
We  Have  No  Purpose  to  Convert  Roman 
Catholics  to  Protestantism.    There  are 


ANNOUNCEMENT  9 

more  than  four  times  as  many  Protestants 
and  other  non-Romanists  in  America  as 
there  are  Roman  CathoKes,  and  with 
these  Protestantism  is  concerned.  How- 
ever, we  cordially  invite  Roman  Catholics 
to  attend.  Protestants  freely  attended 
the  recent  Paulist  Fathers'  lectures  with- 
out criticism  from  their  church,  and  we 
invite  our  Roman  friends  to  return  the 
compliment. 

The  Preacher  Has  Only  the  Kindliest 
Feelings  toward  individual  Roman 
Catholics  and  has  no  desire  to  disturb  the 
faith  of  the  honestly  devout.  What  he 
may  say  in  criticism  of  their  church  will 
be  said  in  the  same  spirit  that  moves  him 
and  other  Protestant  ministers  to  freely 
criticize  Protestantism  from  time  to  time 
as  they  feel  that  there  is  need. 

To  Believe  a  Lie  in  Any  Realm  is  Hurt- 
ful. To  believe  a  lie  in  religion  may 
entail  irreparable  loss.  Jesus  said:  '*/ 
am  the  Truth." 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE 
OF  PROTESTANTISM 

Text:  "Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make 
you  free."— John  8.  32. 

No  age  fully  appreciates  its  indebtedness 

to  the  past.    We  are  evermore  tempted  to 

walk  upon  the  walls  of  our  own  Babylon 

and  say,  "Is  not  this  great  Babylon  which 

we  have  built?"  The  principles  of  thought 

and  action  which  have  been  born  with  us, 

the  atmosphere  of  intellectual,  moral,  and 

spiritual  freedom  which  was  breathed  into 

us  when  we  became  living  souls  constitute  a 

rich  heritage  for  which  we  are  indebted  to 

those  who  have  gone  before.    This  heritage 

has  come  down  to  us  because  our  Protestant 

fathers  fought  on  bloody  fields  of  martial 

encounter    or    laboriously    contended    on 

bloodless  plains  of  polemic  strife.     We  do 

not  realize  the  vast  difference  in  our  lives  if 

we  had  been  born  in  a  land  where  the  right 

to  think  for  oneseK  on  matters  religious  and 

11 


12       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

ecclesiastical  had  been  denied  or  even  per- 
sistently challenged.  We  do  not  always 
appreciate  the  difference  between  a  land 
where  the  free  development  of  the  mind  in 
its  search  for  truth  is  promoted,  and  a  land 
where  mental  assimilation  of  prescribed  re- 
ligious and  ecclesiastical  doctrines  is  the 
aim  rather  than  mental  cultivation.  It  is 
one  thing  to  breathe  with  our  birth  the  air 
of  free  inquiry  and  research;  it  is  quite 
another  thing  to  breathe  the  atmosphere  of 
apprehension  toward  anything  that  resem- 
bles intellectual  adventure  into  realms  re- 
ligious. It  is  one  thing  to  inherit  the  convic- 
tion that  the  faculties  of  the  human  mind 
are  to  be  trusted  and  that  intellectual 
processes  which  have  proved  successful 
when  applied  to  physical  science  and  com- 
mercial life  may  be  applied  with  equal 
success  to  the  religious  life,  and  it  is  quite 
another  thing  to  view  with  suspicion  all 
normal  procedure  of  the  mind  in  matters 
religious,  believing  that  unless  there  is 
ecclesiastical  dictation,  utter  confusion  and 
alienation  from  divine  truth  will  ensue. 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE  13 

But  our  American  heritage  consists  not 
only  in  the  fact  that  we  now  enjoy  intel- 
lectual freedom,  but  in  that,  for  many  gen- 
erations, our  fathers  have  enjoyed  and  exer- 
cised such  freedom.  If  this  freedom  had 
come  only  with  the  advent  of  the  present 
generation,  then  a  much  more  limited  be- 
quest would  have  been  ours.  You  cannot 
change  a  nation  over  night  and  the  passage 
from  darkness  to  light  is  always  accom- 
panied by  the  twilight  of  the  dawn.  Though 
the  people  that  sit  in  darkness  see  a  great 
light,  they  do  not  pass  out  of  the  shadows 
till  several  new  generations  have  been  born. 
It  means  much,  therefore,  that  as  an  Ameri- 
can people  we  receive  our  Protestant  her- 
itage from  generations  preceding  which  have 
also  enjoyed  it.  There  is  a  different  situa- 
tion, for  example,  in  the  Philippine  Islands. 
The  American  flag  floats  there,  it  is  true,  but 
America  has  inherited  a  state  of  intellectual 
and  moral  darkness  which  decades  of  me- 
diaeval misrule  have  created,  and  while 
constitutional  American  liberty  is  guaran- 
teed to  all,  yet  many  will  for  a  long  time  sit 


14       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

in  the  shadows  because  their  ancestors  have 
not  enjoyed  a  Protestant  heritage.  When 
Paul  after  his  arrest  in  Jerusalem  told  the 
chief  captain  that  he  was  a  Roman  citizen, 
the  captain  observed,  "With  a  great  sum 
obtained  I  this  freedom,"  and  Paul  an- 
swered, "But  I  was  free  born."  So  may 
every  American  citizen  born  in  the  free  air 
of  Protestant  liberty  exclaim  with  gratitude, 
"I  was  free  born!" 

It  is  this  Protestant  heritage  which  we 
propose  to  defend  in  the  present  series  of 
sermons.  We  have  no  desire  to  fight  over 
again  battles  of  a  past  day,  nor  to  revive 
ancient  animosities  which  have  happily  been 
laid  to  rest.  People  sometimes  ask:  "Do 
you  think  there  will  be  a  war  in  this  coun- 
try between  the  Roman  Catholics  and  the 
Protestants?"  and  we  invariably  answer 
"No,"  for  we  believe  with  Tennyson  that 
"the  common  sense  of  most  shall  hold  a 
fretful  realm  in  awe."  But  by  that  common 
sense  we  do  not  mean  that  easygoing  indif- 
f erentism  which  calls  all  religious  strife  of  the 
past  the  mere  raving  of  religious  fanaticism 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE  15 

and  which  forgets  that  the  very  opportunity 
for  indifference,  which  so  many  embrace,  is 
due  to  the  triumph  of  principles  for  which 
our  fathers  died.  By  "common  sense"  we 
mean  that  distribution  of  intelUgent  con- 
viction to  all  people  whereby  they  shall  be 
prompt  to  oppose  every  movement,  however 
subtle,  which  seeks  to  undermine  the  foun- 
dations of  Protestant  liberty.  If  such  com- 
mon sense  shall  not  abound,  and  the  pulpit 
and  the  press,  because  of  false  liberality  or 
fear  of  religious  controversy,  shall  promote 
popular  ignorance  of  Protestant  principles, 
then  violence  and  even  war  may  result.  It 
is  therefore  in  the  interest  of  peace  and  for 
the  prevention  of  religious  strife  that  we 
speak  on  these  themes.  Protestantism  is 
essentially  democratic,  and  just  as  democ- 
racy cannot  survive  without  a  high  degree 
of  intelligence,  free  speech,  and  popular 
illumination,  so  Protestantism  asks  only 
that  she  shall  have  the  light,  that  she  shall 
be  granted  the  privilege  of  intelligent  and 
friendly  controversy,  and  that  for  her  and 
for  opposing  systems  of  belief  the  Master's 


16       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

prophecy  shall  be  fulfilled  and  there  "shall 
be  nothing  covered  that  shall  not  be  re- 
vealed and  hid  that  shall  not  be  known." 

We  come  now  to  consider  the  intellectual 
heritage  of  Protestantism.  The  central 
truth  on  which  it  rests  is  the  right  of  private 
judgment;  that  is,  the  right  of  every  man  to 
think  as  profoundly  as  he  may  and  as  in- 
dependently as  he  will  upon  every  question 
of  life,  including  the  most  important  of  all 
themes,  namely,  religion.  It  is  well  for  us 
to  observe  here  that  the  right  of  private 
judgment  does  not  involve  two  things  which 
are  sometimes  thought  to  be  included.  It 
does  not  include  disregard  of  all  authority. 
It  does  not  mean  that  when  a  man's  private 
judgment  is  in  disagreement  with  the  law  of 
the  land  he  has  a  right  to  disobey  that 
law.  The  right  of  private  judgment  will  not 
long  continue  if  such  an  interpretation  be 
placed  upon  it,  for  anarchy,  to  which  such 
a  view  would  lead,  is  fatal  to  freedom  of 
thought.  The  right  of  private  judgment 
must  recognize  the  right  of  the  majority  to 
rule  and  the  independent  thinker  must  sub- 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE  17 

mit  to  majority  rule  though  he  utterly 
disagree  with  the  majority  opinion.  This 
does  not  mean  a  surrender  of  his  right  to 
think  for  himself,  for  that  majority  rule 
carries  with  it  the  right  of  the  individual  to 
lawfully  dissent  from  the  majority  and  to 
use  all  legitimate  means  to  change  that 
majority  opinion  by  public  speech  and  the 
use  of  the  press.  Nor  does  the  right  of 
private  judgment  mean  that  each  man's 
opinion  is  to  be  regarded  as  of  equal  value 
with  that  of  every  other  man  on  a  given 
subject.  A  man  who  has  never  studied 
medicine  has  no  right  to  exalt  his  opinion  to 
equal  place  with  that  of  a  trained  physician. 
But  even  in  the  realm  of  technical  knowl- 
edge, where  indiscriminate  private  judgment 
might  seem  to  be  excluded,  the  right  of 
private  opinion  still  obtains,  for  the  un- 
trained individual  has  the  right  to  decide 
what  technical  authority  he  will  accept,  and 
his  right  of  private  judgment  may  be  fully 
exercised  in  the  selection  of  his  own  phy- 
sician. 

Now,  the  right  to  this  free  exercise  of 


18       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

private  judgment  is  challenged  by  our 
Roman  Catholic  friends  at  the  point  of 
religion.  They  grant  the  right  in  other 
realms,  but  when  it  comes  to  deciding  for 
oneself  what  is  religious  authority  and  what 
authority  he  should  accept;  when  it  comes 
to  deciding  what  doctrines,  religious  and 
ecclesiastical,  are  true  and  what  are  false,  the 
individual  is  told  that  he  must  accept  that 
which  bears  the  Roman  Catholic  stamp  of 
approval  and  nothing  else.  This  attitude  of 
Rome  is  defended  on  the  ground  that  it 
tends  to  promote  that  freedom  of  thought 
for  which  we  have  been  contending.  The 
Rev.  Bertrand  L.  Conway,  one  of  the 
Paulist  Fathers,  in  his  "Question  Box  An- 
swers," a  work  which  bears  the  oflScial 
approval  of  the.  Roman  Catholic  Churcli, 
says  that  freedom  of  thought  in  nonreligious 
realms  is  really  promoted  by  submission  to 
authority  in  the  religious  realm.  He  says 
that  in  the  search  for  truth  it  is  a  relief  to 
know  that  questions  of  religion  are  settled 
by  an  infallible  authority.  The  mind  is  thus 
set  free  for  unobstructed  investigation  of 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE  19 

other  realms.  Let  us  look  at  this.  There  are 
those  who  say,  "If  the  Romanist  desires  to 
have  his  religious  thinking  done  for  him  by 
another,  why  object,  since  he  is  free  to  think 
in  other  realms  as  he  may  choose?"  But 
the  answer  is  that  religion  is  not  something 
which  can  be  separated  from  a  man's  total 
life;  it  cannot  be  placed  in  a  water-tight 
compartment  and  dealt  with  as  though  it 
had  no  connection  with  his  common  thought 
and  action.  Religion  is  the  center  of  his  life 
and  relates  itself  to  every  motion  of  his 
being.  When,  therefore,  one  is  taught  from 
the  tender  years  of  infancy  all  through  life, 
that  he  must  not  question  the  authority  in 
religious  matters  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  he  very  easily  comes  to  accept  that 
authority  in  realms  which  are  not  distinc- 
tively religious.  He  listens  to  the  priest  and 
accepts  unquestioningly  the  authorized 
Roman  teaching  regarding  God,  the  soul, 
and  the  church.  But  the  priest  does  not 
strictly  confine  his  utterances  to  matters  of 
personal  religion.  Some  day  a  political 
campaign  is  on — a  mayor,  a  governor,  a 


20       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

President  is  to  be  elected.  The  Roman 
Church  has  poHtical  convictions.  The  priest 
voices  those  convictions.  The  devout  Cath- 
oKc  hears  that  voice,  and  having  been 
trained  not  to  question  the  priest  in  rehgion, 
accepts  what  he  may  say  concerning  poHtics 
and  surrenders  his  right  to  independent 
thought  on  these  matters  just  as  he  does  on 
rehgious  matters,  and  you  have  practical 
ecclesiastical  dictation  in  a  realm  where 
Rome  theoretically  grants  freedom  of 
thought.  Life  is  so  "inextricably  mixed" 
with  religion  that  you  cannot  surrender  the 
right  of  private  judgment  in  religion  with- 
out surrendering  it  in  the  whole  realm  of 
hfe. 

Herein  lies  the  danger  of  the  parochial 
school.  The  Romscn  Catholic  Church  is 
lauded  for  that  practical  devotion  to  reli- 
gious education  which  leads  it  to  spend 
millions  of  dollars  for  its  own  schools  while 
the  public  school  offers  free  education  to  its 
children.  Senator  George  Wharton  Pepper,^ 
in  his  excellent  Yale  lectures,  praises  the 

^A  Voice  from  the  Crowd,  Yale  University  Press  publishers. 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE    21 

Roman  Catholic  Church  as  the  one  rehgious 
group  "which  has  perceived  most  clearly  the 
dangers  of  a  secularized  education"  and 
declares  that  he  is  "wholly  without  suspicion 
respecting  the  motives  and  aims  of  our 
Roman  Catholic  brethren."  We  have  no 
desire  to  disparage  sacrificial  devotion  to 
religious  education  wherever  practiced,  nor 
do  we  wish  to  create  unhealthy  suspicions, 
but  we  submit  that  we  do  not  need  to  be 
suspicious  at  all;  all  we  need  to  do  is  to  look 
at  the  plain  facts  which  Roman  Catholics 
themselves  are  ready  to  declare.  They 
maintain  their  schools  confessedly  to  teach 
Roman  Catholic  doctrines.  Their  central 
doctrine  concerning  the  church  is  that  its 
authority  in  religion  must  not  be  questioned. 
When  young  people  graduate  from  these 
schools  that  central  doctrine  has  become  a 
part  of  their  mental  furnishing.  If  imme- 
diately on  graduation  they  should  be  trans- 
ported to  Italy,  Spain,  or  some  other  foreign 
land,  then  America  would  not  need  to 
trouble  herself  about  the  parochial  school. 
But  those  young  people  remain  here.   They 


S2       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

become  our  trusted  citizens.  They  are 
lawyers  and  judges  and  business  men,  and 
even  public-school  teachers.  Then  when 
Rome  makes  some  deliverance  on  matters  of 
state  or  of  international  relationship,  or 
speaks  as  did  the  late  Pope  concerning  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  or  ex- 
presses its  opinion  of  Protestantism  or  the 
liquor  question,  vast  multitudes  of  our 
excellent  citizens  recall  their  parochial 
school  training  and  refuse  to  think  indepen- 
dently on  all  these  questions,  not  because 
they  are  distinctively  religious  questions,  but 
because  the  religious  authority  which  they 
have  been  taught  unquestioningly  to  obey 
has  made  a  deliverance  and  they  must  un- 
thinkingly submit  or  be  false  to  their 
church.  This  is  the*  American  quarrel  with 
the  parochial  school.  We  do  not  cast  sinister 
suspicion  on  honest  motives.  We  simply 
take  the  plain  teaching  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  concerning  religious  educa- 
tion, and  draw  the  logical  inference. 

We  thus  see  that  the  right  of  private 
judgment  which  Rome  grants  in  nonreli- 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE     23 

gious  realms  is  not  a  concession  at  all.  When 
she  denies  that  right  in  the  realm  of  religion 
she  is  practically  denying  it  in  all  realms. 
Nor  are  we  left  to  logical  inference  at  this 
point.  She  frankly  admits  that  she  does  not 
look  with  favor  on  the  independent  thinking 
of  the  individual.  Pope  Benedict  XV,  who 
has  just  passed  to  his  reward,  declared,  "No 
private  person,  either  in  books  or  in  daily 
papers  or  in  public  speeches,  has  a  right  to 
act  as  a  teacher  in  the  church.  It  is  well 
known  by  all  who  is  the  one  to  whom  God 
conjBded  the  magistry  of  the  church;  let 
then  the  field  be  free  for  him  so  that  he  may 
speak  when  and  how  he  thinks  suitable  to 
speak.  It  is  the  duty  of  all  to  listen  to  him 
with  obsequious  devotion  and  to  obey  his 
words."  There  is  no  opportunity  here  for 
the  exercise  of  private  judgment.  "Obse- 
quious devotion"  and  utter  obedience  to  the 
views  of  another  give  no  place  to  individual 
opinion.  This  is  the  view  taught  and  de- 
fended by  Rome.  In  the  "Question  Box" 
before  referred  to,  Father  Conway,  in  his 
lectures  to  Protestants,  defends  this  rejec- 


24?       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

tion  of  the  right  of  private  judgment.  In 
answer  to  the  question  "Is  not  your  doc- 
trine of  infalUbiUty  opposed  to  Uberty  of 
thought?"  he  says,  "The  doctrine  of  infaUi- 
biUty  is  opposed  to  the  false  Uberty  of  think- 
ing error,  but  not  to  the  true  Uberty  of 
thinking  the  truth."^  This  is  plausible,  but 
not  sound.  It  is  true  that  no  man  has  a 
right  to  hold  as  truth  that  which  he  is 
inteUectuaUy  persuaded  is  not  true,  but  it 
is  also  true  that  every  man  is  under  obliga- 
tion to  hold  as  truth  that  which  he,  in  the 
free  exercise  of  his  best  judgment,  has  come 
to  regard  as  truth  whether  it  is  actual  truth 
or  not.  And,  conversely,  he  is  under  no 
obligation  to  personally  hold  as  truth  that 
which  he  cannot  see  to  be  true.  The  fallacy 
in  Father  Conway's,  answer  appears  more 
clearly  as  he  elaborates  and  illustrates  his 
position.  He  says,  "No  inteUigent  man 
would  consider  himself  free  to  deny  the  fact 
of  wireless  telegraphy."^  But  the  fact  is  that 

^Question  Box,   Rev.    Bertrand  L.    Conway,  The  Paulist 
Press,  p.  80. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  SI, 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE    25 

every  man  is  perfectly  free  to  deny  the 
existence  of  wireless  telegraphy  until  he  has 
been  convinced  in  his  own  mind  that  there 
is  such  a  thing.  It  is  by  this  process  alone 
that  the  world  has  come  to  believe  in  wire- 
less telegraphy.  The  discoverers  and  inven- 
tors who  gave  us  the  wireless  never  dreamed 
for  a  moment  of  convincing  the  world  that 
they  were  right  by  a  declaration  that  they 
were  infallible.  They  appealed  to  our  reason, 
and  only  as  men,  by  the  exercise  of  private 
opinion,  came  to  be  persuaded  that  tele- 
graphic messages  could  be  conveyed  without 
wires  did  that  conviction  take  hold  of  the 
race.  The  wireless  projectors  did  not  estab- 
lish schools  to  teach  their  own  infallibility, 
nor  seek  to  raise  up  a  generation  that  be- 
lieved it  was  wrong  to  question  anything 
they  authoritatively  said.  They  believed 
they  had  laid  hold  of  scientific  truth  and 
they  flung  it  wide  to  the  free  thought  of  the 
world  and  asked  men  to  test  it  for  them- 
selves without  the  least  insistence  that  be- 
cause the  discoverers  said  it  was  true  it  must 
therefore  be  so.    The  answer,  then,  which 


26       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

Father  Conway  gives  concerning  freedom  of 
thought  shows  that  he  does  not  beheve  in 
it.  Indeed,  he  plainly  says,  in  the  same 
answer,  "This  objection  is  based  on  the  false 
notion  that  unrestricted  liberty  of  thought 
is  a  good  thing  and  that  every  man  has  a 
right  to  think  just  as  he  pleases."^  It  is  here 
that  the  issue  is  squarely  joined  between 
Protestantism  and  Romanism.  As  Protes- 
tants we  believe  that  unrestricted  liberty  of 
thought  is  a  good  thing  and  that  every  man 
has  a  right  to  think  what  he  pleases.  This 
does  not  mean  that  it  makes  no  difference  to 
Protestantism  what  a  man  thinks.  The 
thinking  of  the  world  is  of  tremendous  con- 
cern to  her,  otherwise  she  would  not  make 
the  presses  groan  with  the  tons  of  literature 
which  she  constantly  distributes,  nor  would 
she  send  out  her  preachers  by  the  ten  thou- 
sand to  inform  and  inspire  the  minds  of  her 
millions  of  people.  She  does  care  what  the 
people  think,  but  she  insists  that  she  cannot, 
and  should  not  if  she  could,  do  their  thinking 
for  them.  She  must  teach  the  unthinking  to 

^  Question  Box,  p.  80. 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE  27 

be  thoughtful,  she  must  present  her  facts 
and  arguments  to  all  whom  she  can  per- 
suade to  think,  but  she  must  leave  the  final 
determination  in  the  hands  of  the  individual 
thinker  and  wait  for  his  acceptance  of  her 
religious  views  until  they  commend  them- 
selves to  his  private  judgment.  Protestant- 
ism has  no  desire  for  a  traditional  faith.  She 
knows  that  the  man  who  is  a  Protestant,  and 
a  Christian  for  that  matter,  simply  because 
his  father  told  him  to  be  one  is  no  more  in 
line  with  progressive  Christianity  than  is  the 
man  a  worthy  American  citizen  who  votes 
his  party  ticket  simply  because  his  father 
did.  The  man  who  counts  in  church  and 
state  exercises  his  right  of  private  judgment, 
and,  believing  that  liberty  of  thought,  un- 
restricted by  arbitrary  authority,  is  a  good 
thing,  accepts  the  religious  or  political  faith 
that  appeals  to  his  rational  and  moral 
faculties,  and  is  what  he  is,  politically  and 
religiously,  by  virtue  of  his  personal  decision 
so  to  be. 

The  difference  between  the  Protestant 
and  Roman  position  at  this  point  is  clearly 


28       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

illustrated  by  the  differing  conceptions  of 
what  a  congregation  is.  The  Protestant 
preacher  looks  upon  a  congregation  as  a 
jury  and  feels  himself  to  be  an  advocate 
making  a  plea.  A  lawyer  pleading  with  a 
jury  knows  that  the  final  determination  is 
with  twelve  men,  each  one  of  whom  must  be 
free  to  exercise  his  right  of  private  judg- 
ment. He  comes  before  the  jury  not  with  a 
statement  of  authority,  either  personal  or 
judicial,  but  with  argument  and  plea,  hoping 
to  persuade  twelve  men  to  freely  agree  with 
him.  When  he  quotes  the  authority  of  law, 
he  argues  that  it  applies  to  the  case  in  hand 
and  trusts  the  jury  will  think  hkewise.  So 
comes  the  Protestant  preacher  before  his 
congregation.  He  is  pleading  for  a  verdict. 
He  may  quote  the.  authority  of  Scripture 
and  the  words  and  acts  of  the  fathers,  to- 
gether with  the  laws  of  the  church,  but  he 
knows  these  avail  little  unless  he  can  con- 
vince those  before  him,  who  exercise  the 
right  to  think  as  they  please,  that  his 
positions  are  well  taken.  If  they  are  not  so 
persuaded,  he  recognizes  their  perfect  right 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE  29 

to  reject  his  argument  and  refuse  his  plea 
and  arise  and  go  their  way  unconvinced.  No 
right-thinking  preacher  would  feel  that  he 
had  won  a  trophy  for  his  Master  if  at  the 
close  of  a  sermon  a  man  should  come  for- 
ward and  say:  "I  have  listened  to  your 
arguments  and  your  plea.  They  do  not 
appeal  to  me.  I  cannot  believe  your  teach- 
ing; the  doctrines  of  Christianity  do  not 
appeal;  but  since  you  claim  the  authority  of 
high  heaven  and  demand  that  I  accept  your 
religion  I  will  do  so,  even  though  my  own 
judgment  revolts  against  it."  To  such  a  man 
the  true  preacher  would  say,  "I  will  be  glad 
to  present  the  matter  further  to  you  until 
your  own  judgment  shall  assent;  but  you 
cannot  be  a  follower  of  Jesus  Christ,  who 
placed  such  tremendous  emphasis  on  the 
individual  choice,  and  so  thoroughly  dis- 
counted traditionalism,  without  reaching 
the  place  of  free  and  unrestricted  choice  of 
him  through  the  independent  action  of  your 
own  mind  and  heart." 

Now,  if  the  Protestant  conception  of  a 
congregation  is  illustrated  by  the  jury,  the 


30       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

Roman  Catholic  conception  is  illustrated  by 
a  military  regiment.  The  general  of  an  army 
does  not  make  an  appeal  to  the  private 
judgment  of  the  soldier.  He  makes  an  appeal 
to  the  recognition  of  authority.  The  soldier 
cannot  say,  "That  does  not  appeal  to  my 
judgment  and  therefore  I  will  not  accept  it." 
He  is  expected  to  surrender  his  judgment  to 
an  arbitrary  authority  and  follow  a  certain 
course  altogether  apart  from  his  own 
opinions.  He  belongs  to  the  company  whom 
Tennyson  immortalizes  in  his  "Charge  of 
the  Light  Brigade": 

"Theirs  not  to  make  reply. 
Theirs  not  to  reason  why. 
Theirs  but  to  do  and  die." 

This  is  true  military  submission  to 
authority.  The  Roman  Catholic  congrega- 
tion is  not  expected  to  reason  why  nor  make 
reply  when  the  authorized  representative 
of  the  church  speaks.  The  priest  does  not 
await  a  verdict;  he  awaits  obedience.  It  is 
not  reason  but  command  that  rules.  Not 
that  the  devout  communicant  is  expected 
to    be    thoughtless,    any    more    than    the 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE     SI 

obedient  soldier  is  to  be  unthinking,  but 
each  is  expected  to  adjust  his  thinking  to 
processes  preconceived  and  authoritatively 
declared. 

This  position  of  the  Roman  Catholic  is 
not  one  of  choice  but  of  necessity.  The 
superstructure  of  Rome  cannot  stand  if  this 
foundation  stone  be  removed.  Just  notice 
how  carefully  the  system  is  guarded  at  this 
point.  There  is  practically  no  chance  what- 
ever for  that  free  spirit  of  investigation  and 
individual  judgment  which  is  the  glory  of 
our  American  life.  The  death  of  Pope 
Benedict  XV  has  called  our  attention  to  the 
papal  power.  For  our  Roman  Catholic 
friends  in  their  sorrow  over  the  death  of 
their  official  head  we  have  the  most  sincere 
sympathy  and  have  been  glad  to  remember 
them  in  public  prayer  this  evening.  Millions 
of  devout  men  and  women  throughout  the 
world  have  suffered  bereavement  and  we 
have  no  disposition  to  add  any  bitterness  to 
their  cup  of  sorrow.  Our  reference  to  the 
Pope  is  solely  to  the  method  of  his  election 
and  that  of  his  successor.  He  is  elected  by  a 


S2       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

college  of  seventy  cardinals.  This  body  has 
been  appointed  by  a  Pope.  In  it  there  is  not 
the  slightest  representation  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  laity.  No  one  who  is  not  an  official 
clergyman  of  the  church  can  have  any  voice. 
The  Pope  so  elected  is  the  supreme  watch- 
man on  the  walls  of  Romanism.  He  per- 
sonalizes the  careful  system  of  close  scrutiny 
by  which  all  activities  of  that  church  can  be 
seen  almost  instantaneously.  Let  a  bishop 
or  archbishop  reveal  the  slightest  tendency 
toward  progressive  ideas;  let  him  advocate 
the  right  of  Roman  Catholic  laymen  to  be 
heard  in  the  official  councils  of  the  church, 
let  him  criticize,  ever  so  calmly,  the  action 
of  his  ecclesiastical  superiors,  and  the  Pope 
may  remove  him  without  delay.  Further-  ^ 
more,  the  laws  which  govern  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  are  expressive  only  of  the 
clerical  mind.  The  lawmaking  body  of 
Romanism  has  not  the  slightest  lay  repre- 
sentation. The  rank  and  file  of  the  member- 
ship of  the  church  have  no  voice  whatever 
in  determining  what  laws  shall  govern  it. 
The  laws  of  the  church  in  the  United  States 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE     33 

are  made  by  the  national  or  plenary  coun- 
cils, three  of  which  were  held  during  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  voting  member- 
ship of  these  councils  is  confined  exclusively 
to  the  bishops.  The  parish  priesthood, 
which  is  the  most  democratic  element  in  the 
clerical  body,  has  no  voice  whatever,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  layman.  Even  this  episcopal 
legislation  is  subject  to  the  approval  of  the 
Pope.  When,  therefore,  you  eliminate 
wholly  the  voice  of  the  common  people,  ex- 
clude even  the  common  priesthood,  cause 
the  lawmaking  body  to  consist  exclusively 
of  bishops,  make  even  their  legislation  sub- 
ject to  the  approval  of  the  Pope,  require 
that  he  be  elected  by  a  small  body  composed 
of  cardinals  whom  a  preceding  Pope  has 
appointed,  and  then  make  the  Pope  the 
absolute  ruler  of  the  whole  church  with  no 
check  on  his  power,  it  is  easy  to  see  that 
democracy  with  its  attendant  right  of 
private  judgment  has  no  place  whatever  in 
the  Roman  system. 

Now,  Rome  does  not  thus  exclude  de- 
mocracy simply  because  of  choice,  but  from 


34       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

sheer  necessity.  It  is  evident  that  if  she 
should  once  admit  the  right  of  private  judg- 
ment, her  system  would  fall  to  the  ground. 
It  has  been  well  said  that  if  Rome  should  cut 
her  little  finger  she  would  bleed  to  death. 
Once  throw  open  the  doctrinal  and  ecclesi- 
astical system  of  Rome  to  common  demo- 
cratic debate,  and  subject  to  the  common 
rules  of  research  and  reason  her  dogmatic 
insistence  upon  divine  right,  and  that  sys- 
tem could  not  endure.  Examine  the  reason- 
ing by  which  she  supports  her  claim  to  be 
the  only  oflScial  representative  of  Jesus 
Christ  upon  earth.  Father  Conway  is  asked, 
"Is  not  your  church  a  spiritual  despotism  in 
which  men  must  surrender  their  private 
judgment  in  religion  to  men  like  them- 
selves?"^ He  replies  in  his  official  "Question*^ 
Box"  that  this  would  be  the  case  if  one  sub- 
mitted to  the  authority  of  a  church  founded 
by  Calvin  or  Wesley,  but  it  is  not  the  case 
if  he  surrender  his  reason  to  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church.  When  we  ask  why  this 
distinction,  he  replies  that  the  Calvinistic  or 

^Question  Box,  p.  83. 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE     35 

Methodist  Church  is  not  authorized  by 
Jesus  Christ,  but  that  the  Roman  CathoKc 
Church  is  so  authorized.  When  we  press  him 
for  proof  he  simply  quotes  the  words  of  the 
Master,  "He  that  heareth  you,  heareth  me"; 
"As  the  Father  hath  sent  me,  I  also  send 
you";  "He  that  despiseth  you,  despiseth 
me."  The  tremendous  leap  by  which  he 
passes  from  logic  to  unsupported  assump- 
tion he  does  not  explain.  The  most  fantastic 
folly  could  be  proven  by  similar  disregard  of 
the  common  rules  of  logic.  Now,  we  submit 
that  if  the  rational  grounds  of  Rome's  as- 
sumption of  authority  were  subjected  to  the 
decision  of  the  common  mind  and  the  same 
rules  of  reasoning  observed  which  a  lawyer 
in  court  or  a  business  man  at  a  directors' 
meeting  must  employ,  the  irrational  char- 
acter of  her  assumption  of  authority  would 
appear  and  her  ecclesiastical  system  would 
either  fall  to  the  ground  or  undergo  radical 
revision.  Rome  is  therefore  fighting  for  her 
own  life  when  she  opposes  the  right  of 
private  judgment.  She  cannot  in  the  very 
nature  of  the  case  be  friendly  to  this  vital 


36       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

element  of  our  Protestant  heritage.  With  all 
personal  friendliness  toward  individual 
Roman  Catholics  and  all  antagonism  toward 
rabid  rancor  and  persecuting  prejudice,  we 
must  not  shut  our  eyes  to  the  plain  fact  that 
the  right  of  every  man  to  think  for  himself, 
which  is  the  core  of  democracy  and  of 
Protestantism,  is  something  to  which  Rome 
can  never  reconcile  herself  so  long  as  she 
remains  what  she  is  to-day. 

Behind  these  opposing  attitudes  of  Ro- 
manism and  Protestantism  lie  two  opposite 
theories  of  the  human  mind  and  its  out- 
workings.  The  Protestant  theory  of  the 
mind  of  man  is  that  it  is  trustworthy  and 
that  if  the  mental  faculties  are  properly 
developed  and  the  moral  and  spiritual  nature 
filled  with  the  spirit  of  Christ,  those  intellec- 
tual faculties  will,  in  their  free  exercise,  find 
the  truth.  Jesus  challenged  men  to  this  free 
exercise,  when  he  said  "Seek  and  ye  shall 
find,"  and  when  he  appealed  to  men  on 
multiplied  occasions  to  exercise  their  reason- 
ing powers  even  with  reference  to  his  own 
divinely  authoritative  deliverances.     Now, 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE     37 

the  Roman  theory  is  that  the  free  exercise  of 
the  reasoning  powers  of  man  will  lead  first 
to  confusion  and  ultimately  to  fundamental 
error.  Just  as  the  Roman  distrust  of  the 
physical  endowments  of  the  race  leads  her  to 
regard  marriage  as  a  concession  to  weakness 
and  to  laud  the  celibate  state  as  more  holy, 
so  the  distrust  of  the  intellectual  faculties 
leads  her  to  dictate  the  thinking  of  her 
people  as  far  as  she  is  able.  Protestantism 
believes  that  both  the  physical  powers  and 
the  intellectual  faculties  are  trustworthy, 
and  that  when  the  heart  is  clean  their 
normal  exercise  is  not  only  approved  but 
required  by  God.  The  Protestant  theory 
stands  well  the  pragmatic  test  of  experience. 
The  free  exercise  of  the  mental  powers  does 
not  lead  to  that  confusion  of  mind  on  reli- 
gious matters  with  which  Protestantism  is  so 
often  charged.  Father  Conway  tells  non- 
Catholics  that  they  "cannot  agree  among 
themselves  about  the  most  fundamental 
doctrines  of  Christianity."^  This  statement 
is  a  most  thoroughgoing  misrepresentation 

^Question  Box,  p.  81. 


38       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

of  Protestantism.  The  fact  is  that  all  the 
great  Protestant  denominations  are  in  essen- 
tial agreement  on  the  fundamental  doctrines 
of  Christianity.  All  believe  in  the  deity  of 
Christ,  the  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures, 
salvation  through  the  crucified  Redeemer, 
the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  the  gift  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  institutional  Christianity  as 
represented  by  the  Christian  Church,  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  reward  and  punish- 
ment after  death.  Not  only  does  Protes- 
tantism agree  on  the  fundamentals,  but  on 
methods  of  work  it  is  essentially  one.  The 
* 'Federal  Council  of  the  Churches  of  Christ 
in  America"  is  a  union  movement  in  which 
all  the  large  denominations  of  Protestant- 
ism unite.  United  Protestantism  promotes^ 
evangelism,  has  adopted  a  social  creed,  and 
is  working  to  promote  home  and  foreign 
missionary  activities  of  an  evangelistic,  edu- 
cational, and  philanthropic  character.  Even 
in  the  secondary  realm  of  church  polity 
there  is  unity,  for  clergymen  and  laity  pass 
easily  from  church  to  church,  with  mutual 
recognition  of  ministerial  orders  and  lay 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE  39 

membership  in  harmony  with  the  prayer  of 
Jesus  "that  they  all  may  be  one."  Now,  this 
unity  of  Protestantism  means  much  more 
than  a  similar  unity  in  Roman  Catholicism, 
for  it  is  a  spontaneous  unity.  Protestantism 
has  no  Pope,  no  college  of  cardinals  set  on 
its  walls  to  detect  the  slightest  dissent  and 
immediately  correct  it.  The  Protestant 
churches  have  been  more  eager  for  religious 
liberty  than  for  religious  unity.  They  have 
invited  the  fullest  discussion  and  have 
encouraged,  as  some  think  excessively,  the 
disposition  to  form  new  church  organiza- 
tions out  of  small  groups  which  differ  from 
the  main  body  on  matters  which  seem  to 
them  important.  Yet  with  all  this  free 
exercise  of  the  right  of  private  judgment 
Protestantism  finds  itself  to  be  essentially 
one  on  the  fundamentals  of  Christianity  and 
even  on  multitudes  of  matters  which  are  not 
fundamental.  Is  not  this  genuine  scriptural 
unity  .f^  Do  we  not  claim  supernatural  super- 
vision of  the  Old  Testament  writers  because 
so  many  different  books  came  from  the 
minds  of  so  many  different  authors  who  were 


40       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

widely  separated  and  who  started  with  no 
purpose  to  produce  one  harmonious  volume? 
The  absence  of  plan  to  unite  reveals  the 
unifying  power  of  truth.  Why  not,  then, 
credit  Protestantism  with  similar  super- 
natural guidance  when,  with  no  purpose  to 
agree,  the  different  denominations  have  come 
to  such  essential  agreement?  This  is  surely 
high  testimony  to  the  trustworthiness  of  the 
intellectual  faculties  of  man.  The  search  for 
truth,  when  undertaken  with  pure  motive 
and  unfettered  mentality,  is  surely  approved 
of  God  and  brings  the  seeker  into  harmony 
with  him  who  is  the  Spirit  of  truth.  We  are 
not  here,  even  by  inference,  disparaging  the 
necessity  of  a  divine  revelation,  for  the  end 
of  that  revelation  is  to  renovate  the  moral 
nature  of  man,  eraancipate  his  mind  from 
the  bondage  which  sin  of  the  heart  always 
imposes,  and  set  him  free  to  seek  the  truth. 
This  leads  us  to  the  practical  question 
which  is  agitating  Romanism  and  Prot- 
estantism alike  to-day,  Should  the  historical 
textbooks  in  the  public  school  be  rewritten? 
The  unwillingness  of  Rome  to  trust  the  in- 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE     41 

tellectual  nature  of  man  makes  her  suspi- 
cious of  every  scientific  historian.  Her 
conception  of  an  historian  is  that  he  shall  be 
a  man  who  has  submitted  to  the  authority 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  and  who 
writes  as  an  apologist  for  that  church  and 
as  a  propagandist  for  Romanism.  Prot- 
estantism does  not  want  an  historian  to  be 
either  an  apologist  or  a  propagandist.  She 
wants  him  to  lay  bare  the  actual  facts  of 
history  without  reference  to  the  help  or  hurt 
which  those  facts  may  occasion  any  cause. 
Protestantism  is,  therefore,  in  complete 
sympathy  with  the  policy  which  the  public 
school  has  thus  far  followed  in  seeking 
accuracy  of  statement  and  reliability  of 
authorship  above  all  else  in  the  historical 
textbooks  which  are  placed  in  the  hands  of 
youth.  Rome  gives  abundant  evidence  that 
she  does  not  believe  in  this  policy.  One  of 
her  latest  apologists,  Edward  Ingram  Wat- 
kin,  in  his  book  Some  Thoughts  on  Catholic 
Apologetics,  quoted  by  Professor  Henry  C. 
Sheldon,  of  Boston  University,  says:  "Of 
the  great  thinkers  who  have  acknowledged 


42       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

the  authority  of  the  church,  the  majority 
have  been,  and  are,  men  of  metaphysical 
rather  than  of  historical  minds,  men  who 
prize  the  static  element  of  experience  more 
than  the  dynamic.  Moreover,  among  the 
ancients  (with  few  exceptions)  and  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  history  was  in  a  very  poor  con- 
dition, since  the  historical  sense,  as  we 
understand  it,  was  simply  nonexistent.  The 
apologist  ought  in  all  honesty  to  admit  this." 
This  has  long  been  the  contention  of  Prot- 
estants. They  have  known  many  cases 
where  Roman  Catholicism  has  approved  his- 
torical statements  which  were  made  by  meta- 
physical apologists  for  Rome  rather  than  un- 
biased scientific  historians.  Professor  David 
S.  Schaff  quotes  a  number  of  historical  in- 
accuracies which  h^ve  been  proclaimed  as 
truth,  due  doubtless  to  the  dominance  of  the 
metaphysical  over  the  historical  cast  of 
mind  which  Watkin  admits  in  Roman 
Catholic  historians.  The  present  manhood 
and  womanhood  of  France  were  taught  in 
their  youth  that  the  Huguenots  were  trai- 
tors to  their  king,  Louis  XIV,  and  that  in 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE     43 

emigrating  from  France  they  despised  their 
native  country. 

The  historical  sense  was  certainly  lacking 
in  the  historian  who  prepared  those  Roman 
CathoHc  textbooks.  Those  Roman  Cathohc 
prelates  in  Washington  last  fall  who  pro- 
nounced the  Irish  people  "the  most  apostolic 
race  in  history/'  and  Mayor  Curley,  of 
Boston,  who  described  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
as  a  company  of  "tramps,"  were  likewise 
sadly  lacking  in  the  historical  sense  of  ac- 
curacy. Father  Conway  in  his  "Question 
Box"  shows  a  sad  disregard  of  historical 
accuracy  when  he  states  on  page  121  that 
Protestant  success  in  reaching  pagan  nations 
"has  been  ridiculously  small,  as  its  own 
ministers  testify,"  and  then  quotes  from 
articles  written  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  and 
the  Nineteenth  Century  in  the  year  1888  and 
an  article  in  the  "Dublin  Review,"  written 
in  January,  1889.  If  Father  Conway  has  not 
read  anything  concerning  the  success  of 
Protestant  missions  since  1888  or  1889,  he 
certainly  cannot  speak  with  historical  accu- 
racy on  the  subject.   Yet  the  book  in  which 


44       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

this  is  found  is  given  to  non-Catholics  in  1921 
as  a  present-day  answer  to  their  inquiries! 

In  view  of  the  manner  in  which  our  Ro- 
man CathoUc  friends  handle  the  sacred 
treasures  of  historical  truth,  Protestants  are 
justified  in  viewing  with  alarm  their  pro- 
posal to  rewrite  the  historical  textbooks  for 
our  public  schools. 

It  is  not  easy  to  ascertain  truth.  It  is 
diflScult  to  be  historically  accurate.  The 
question  has  been  raised  "Can  we  tell  the 
truth .^"  We  need  to  join  all  the  forces  that 
make  for  truth  and  rebuke  every  tendency 
to  erroneous  statement  and  historical  mis- 
representation. The  Church  of  Christ 
should  be  ever  the  pillar  and  ground  of 
truth.  Protestantism  does  not  profess  to 
have  been  faultless  in  fidelity  to  truth,  but 
she  does  claim  to  have  fostered  independent 
thinking  on  the  part  of  the  individual  and  to 
have  cultivated  a  disposition  to  protest 
against  arbitrary  dogmatism.  Having  pro- 
moted these  forces,  she  has  encouraged  a 
spirit  which  tends  to  correct  her  own  mis- 
takes. She  has  thus  ever  been  a  thorn  in  the 


THE  INTELLECTUAL  HERITAGE  45 

side  of  every  institution  claiming  immunity 
from  criticism  and  arrogating  to  itself  dog- 
matic authority.  It  is  a  pity  when  a  great 
church  which  claims  to  be  the  representative 
of  Christ  on  earth  discourages  independent 
thinking  and  critical  research,  for  these  have 
not  only  contributed  greatly  to  the  ascer- 
tainment of  scientific  truth,  but  they  are 
plainly  corrective  of  a  thousand  shams 
which  have  plagued  the  world.  The  dis- 
position to  falsify  is  alarmingly  prevalent. 
All  genuine  progress  lies  along  the  path  of 
truth.  Truth  is  the  emancipator,  says  the 
One  who  is  the  truth.  The  Protestant 
heritage  of  truth  and  the  right  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  search  for  it,  unhampered  by 
ecclesiastical  dogmatism  and  regardless  of 
consequences,  must  be  maintained  if  the 
church  and  the  nation  shall  press  forward  to 
God's  goal  of  triumphant  truth;  for,  as 
Bryant  sings 

"Truth  crushed  to  earth  shall  rise  again: 
The  eternal  years  of  God  are  hers; 
But  error,  wounded,  writhes  in  pain, 
And  dies  among  his  worshipers.'^ 


n 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  OF 
PROTESTANTISM 

Text:  "And  herein  do  I  exercise  myself,  to  have  always 
a  conscience  void  of  offense  toward  God  and  toward  men." — 
Acts  24.  16. 

The  moral  heritage  of  Protestantism  is 
closely  allied  to  the  intellectual  heritage. 
We  saw  that  the  corner  stone  of  the  intellec- 
tual heritage  was  the  right  of  private  judg- 
ment. We  find  that  the  moral  heritage  like- 
wise has  a  corner  stone:  it  is  liberty  of 
conscience.  Just  as  the  Protestant  insists 
that  a  man  has  the  right  to  think  for  himself 
and  refuse  to  accept  as  intellectually  sound 
that  which  does  not  seem  reasonable  to  his 
own  mind,  so  the  Protestant  also  claims  that 
a  man  has  a  right  to  refuse  to  believe  any- 
thing to  be  right  until  his  own  conscience 
shall  approve  it.  We  hold  that  the  determin- 
ing factor  in  morals  is  the  vigorous  exercise 
of  a  man's  conscience  just  as  the  determining 

46 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  47 

factor  in  intellectual  life  is  the  free  exercise 
of  the  individual  mind.  The  right  of  private 
judgment  and  the  right  to  free  exercise  of 
one's  own  conscience  go  hand  in  hand. 

Liberty  of  conscience,  like  the  right  of 
private  judgment,  needs  a  certain  degree  of 
qualifying  definition.  What  is  this  con- 
science for  whose  liberty  we  stand?  Some 
will  answer  that  it  is  the  voice  of  God  in  the 
soul  of  man.  This  answer  is  too  general.  If 
by  "the  voice  of  God"  is  meant  that  every 
specific  course  which  the  conscience  ap- 
proves is  that  which  is  right  in  the  abstract 
and  is  in  every  particular  what  God  would 
have  the  individual  do,  we  cannot  accept 
the  definition.  For  conscience  approves  the 
conduct  which  the  individual  thinks  is  right 
and  even  when  the  individual  is  wrong,  but 
honestly  thinks  he  is  right,  conscience  ap- 
proves. Thus  the  pagan  mother  thinks  it  is 
right  to  cast  her  child  into  the  sacred  river 
as  an  act  of  devotion,  and  her  conscience 
approves  an  act  which  in  itself  is  abhorrent 
to  God.  It  cannot  be  said  that  her  approv- 
ing conscience  is  the  voice  of  God  speaking 


48       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

in  favor  of  child  murder.  And  yet  God  does 
most  certainly  approve  of  the  sacrificial 
obedience  of  the  individual  to  his  honest 
convictions.  The  fact  is  that  conscience  is 
the  voice  of  the  moral  nature  speaking  its 
approval  of  conduct  which  is  in  harmony 
with  that  individual's  honest  convictions. 
That  moral  nature  is  itself  the  medium 
through  which  God  speaks  to  man,  so  that 
the  motions  of  the  moral  nature  are  pro- 
duced by  God  even  though  their  expression 
by  the  conscience  may  not  accurately  repre- 
sent the  divine  mind.  Perhaps  the  best 
illustration  is  found  in  the  radio  broadcast- 
ing which  is  now  occupying  the  popular 
mind.  When  we  listen  at  the  receiving  end 
we  sometimes  hear  very  imperfectly  the 
voice  of  a  speaker... We  cannot  understand 
clearly  what  he  says.  Indeed,  we  may  mis- 
understand him  and  conclude  that  he  is 
saying  just  the  opposite  of  that  which  is  on 
his  lips.  The  fault  is  with  our  receiving  set 
which  is  the  work  of  an  amateur  and  does 
not  permit  the  speaker  to  be  heard  dis- 
tinctly. But  the  fact  is  that  whatever  we  do 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  49 

hear  through  that  receiver  is  caused  by  the 
speaker  at  the  other  end  whose  exact  raean- 
ing  is  distorted  because  of  the  imperfect 
instruments  which  we  use.  So  with  the 
conscience.  It  is  imperfect  until  it  has  had 
Christian  enhghtenment  and  training,  and 
the  voice  of  God  which  speaks  through  the 
moral  nature  cannot  be  distinctly  heard  nor 
correctly  understood  until  the  medium  of 
communication  is  perfect,  but  it  is  still  true 
that  whatever  movements  are  stirring  in  the 
moral  nature  of  the  individual  are  occa- 
sioned by  God  who  is  seeking  to  express  him- 
self clearly  to  our  minds  and  hearts.  In  a 
limited  sense  it  may  therefore  be  said  that 
conscience  is  the  voice  of  God,  but  in  the 
unlimited  sense  of  the  exact  conveyance  to 
the  individual  of  the  thought  and  will  of  the 
Divine  Being,  it  is  not  his  voice.  It  will  thus 
be  seen  that  in  emphasizing  the  right  of  the 
individual  to  the  free  exercise  of  his  con- 
science we  are  not  excusing  any  disregard  of 
such  guidance  and  help  as  the  church  and 
the  Bible  furnish.  While  his  conscience  is  to 
be  his  guide,  he  is  under  obUgation  to  en- 


50       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

lighten  that  conscience  by  every  means  at 
his  command,  and  the  church  is  one  of  the 
divinely  appointed  luminaries  on  the  road 
to  righteousness  which  he  cannot  aflford  to 
ignore. 

Again  it  must  be  remembered  that  liberty 
of  conscience  means  the  right  to  give  con- 
science its  fullest  exercise.  The  freedom 
which  it  needs  is  the  freedom  to  act,  not  to 
be  passive.  A  man  has  no  right  to  ask  that 
his  conscience  be  freed  from  the  domination 
of  others  simply  that  he  may  enslave  it 
himself.  The  liberty  of  conscience  for  which 
our  fathers  fought  was  the  liberty  to  scruti- 
nize every  moral  demand  with  the  utmost 
moral  diligence  to  ascertain  if  its  demands 
were  those  of  God.  The  indolent  conscience, 
the  sleeping  conscience  can  know  no  true 
liberty  and  is  entitled  to  none. 

Regarding  conscience,  then,  as  the  voice 
of  that  moral  nature  through  which  God 
seeks  to  speak,  and  understanding  its  free- 
dom to  be  the  opportunity  of  unrestricted 
search  for  moral  right,  let  us  pause  for  a 
moment  and  see  how  great  is  this  moral 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  51 

heritage  and  how  vital  a  part  it  has  had  in 
shaping  the  free  institutions  of  America. 

The  Pilgrim  Fathers  gave  us  our  Ameri- 
can institutions.  It  has  become  popular  in 
some  circles  to-day  to  discount  the  Pilgrims 
and  to  tell  us  how  much  more  highly  we 
have  thought  of  them  than  we  ought  to 
think.  It  is  quite  true  that  our  American 
institutions,  in  exactly  their  present-day 
form,  did  not  come  over  in  the  Mayflower, 
but  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  nearest  ap- 
proach to  those  institutions  in  all  the  world 
of  that  day  was  made  by  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
when  they  founded  and  promoted  Plymouth 
colony.  Bancroft  says  substantially  that  the 
document  drawn  up  and  signed  in  the  cabin 
of  the  Mayflower  was  the  most  advanced 
statement  of  constitutional  democracy  then 
extant.  The  germ  of  this  constitutional 
liberty  was  found  in  the  Pilgrims'  insistence 
on  liberty  of  the  individual  conscience.  The 
quarrel  of  these  men  with  the  English  gov- 
ernment was  concerning  the  divine  right  of 
kings.  The  ruling  monarchs  of  that  day 
insisted  that  the  king  reigned  by  divine 


52       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

right  and  that  to  dissent  from  his  dictum 
was  to  array  oneself  against  God.  The 
Pilgrims  denied  this.  In  so  doing  they  broke 
with  the  Anglican  Church  as  well  as  the 
state,  for  episcopacy  was  the  bulwark  of 
royal  autocracy,  and  the  two  stood  or  fell 
together.  Because  of  this  protest  against 
ecclesiastical  and  royal  autocracy  the  Pil- 
grims were  persecuted.  Having  much  in 
common  with  the  Puritans,  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  were  much  more  definite  in  the 
claim  that  no  king  and  no  ecclesiastic  had  a 
right  to  supplant  the  individual  conscience. 
They  became  the  protestants  of  the  Puri- 
tans, went  to  Holland,  were  more  thor- 
oughly indoctrinated  in  the  sanctity  of 
conscience  by  the  teaching  of  their  pastor, 
the  Rev.  John  Robinson,  and,  as  Silvester 
Home  put  it,  took  so  seriously  the  teaching 
of  Robinson  that  government  should  be 
founded  on  the  free  exercise  of  the  intensified 
and  instructed  conscience,  that  they,  one 
day,  rose  up  and  fled  to  America  that  they 
might  make  the  great  experiment.  Here 
they  formed  a  government  of  the  people. 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  53 

The  town  meeting  where  all  might  speak, 
and  not  the  royal  chamber,  was  the  place 
where  laws  were  made.  The  church  and 
state  were  separated  in  that  nonchurch 
members  might  vote.  Miles  Standish,  who 
never  joined  the  church,  exercised  the  fran- 
chise. The  persecution  of  the  witches  with 
which  the  Pilgrims  have  been  charged,  did 
not  occur  in  their  colony  but  in  that  of  the 
Puritans,  who  were  the  aristocrats  among 
the  colonists.  Though  the  Pilgrims  were 
plain  country  folk,  they  believed  thoroughly 
in  popular  education.  Here,  then,  are 
American  institutions  in  embryo — separa- 
tion of  church  and  state,  popular  education, 
legislation  by  the  people,  aversion  to  perse- 
cution, opposition  to  ecclesiastical  as  well  as 
royal  autocracy,  all  these  resting  on  the 
foundation  stone  of  liberty  of  conscience. 
This  is  our  American  heritage:  this  is  our 
Protestant  heritage.  Those  who  do  not  ap- 
preciate the  one  discount  the  other.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  Roman  Catholicism  pre- 
fers ''The  Star-Spangled  Banner"  to  our 
national  anthem,  since  the  latter  sings  con- 


54       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

cerning  the  "land  of  the  Pilgrims'  pride" 
and  evermore  reminds  us  of  our  inherited 
opposition  to  ecclesiastical  as  well  as  mon- 
archical rule. 

Our  Roman  Catholic  friends  are  taught 
that  liberty  of  conscience  as  we  understand 
it  is  not  a  good  thing.  When  viewed  from 
the  standpoint  of  individual  exercise  it  has 
received  the  papal  denunciation,  being 
characterized  as  man's  madness  and  not  his 
right.  "Liberty  of  conscience  is  liberty  of 
perdition"  is  a  quotation  from  Roman 
Catholic  sources.  It  is  true  that  in  the  lec- 
tures to  Protestants  we  find  quotations 
which  indicate  the  opposite  view.  We  read 
that  Pope  Innocent  III  declared  that  "what- 
ever is  done  contrary  to  conscience  leads  to 
hell,"^  and  that  Saint  Thomas  said,  "He  who 
acts  against  conscience  sins."^  But  even  in  his 
appeal  to  Protestants  the  Roman  apologist 
reveals  a  different  understanding  of  obe- 
dience to  conscience  from  that  which  Prot- 


^  Question  Box,  p.  91. 
8  Ibid.,  p.  92. 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  55 

estantism  maintains.  The  Romanist  always 
has  in  mind  a  conscience  which  has  already- 
yielded  itself  to  the  authority  of  the  church, 
and  which  has  been  instructed  that  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  is  the  sole  mouth- 
piece of  God  on  earth.  A  conscience  so 
instructed  can  only  point  to  the  church,  and 
its  warning  is  always  against  departure 
from  the  teachings  of  that  church,  just  as 
the  conscience  of  the  heathen  woman  warns 
her  against  departure  from  heathen  prac- 
tices in  which  she  has  been  instructed  from 
infancy.  It  is  quite  another  thing  to  approve 
the  action  of  a  conscience  which  has  been 
taught  to  freely  exercise  itself  regarding 
every  question,  even  the  authority  of  the 
church  and  of  the  Scriptures.  Such  free 
exercise  of  conscience  Rome  does  not  ap- 
prove, as  appears  from  further  study  of  the 
same  lectures  to  Protestants  by  Father 
Conway  to  which  we  have  frequently  re- 
ferred. He  says  that  if  we  were  to  "'allow 
reason,  subject  as  it  is  to  public  opinion, 
caprice,  passion,  prejudice,  to  speak  in  its 
own  name,  the  whole  basis  and  sanction  of 


56       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

the  moral  order  would  at  once  disappear." 
He  is  here  answering  a  question  concerning 
conscience  as  a  sufficient  guide  for  man.  He 
defines  conscience  as  ''reason,"  telling  us 
what  is  good  or  bad,  and  he  plainly  means 
that  if  conscience  were  left  to  act  with  per- 
fect liberty,  the  basis  of  the  moral  order 
would  disappear.  Here  is  definite  opposition 
to  the  free  exercise  of  conscience.  It  is 
honest  opposition,  no  doubt,  but  opposition 
due  to  a  false  moral  philosophy  which  Rome 
persistently  teaches.  Her  teaching  invari- 
ably is  that  there  can  be  no  healthy  moral 
development  without  unquestioning  sub- 
mission to  arbitrary  religious  authority. 
Her  position  on  this  subject  is  still  more 
clearly  set  forth  when  she  speaks  concerning 
the  right  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  to 
command  the  temporal  power  for  the  teach- 
ing and  enforcement  of  her  doctrines.  Her- 
genrother  declares:  ''The  church  rejects  the 
principle  of  free  investigation  which  makes 
reason  the  judge  over  God's  utterances  and 

*  Question  Box,  p.  5. 

*  Sacerdotalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  Henry  C.  Sheldon, 
p.  34.     Eaton  &  Mains. 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  57 

her  own  teaching  OjBSce.  .  .  .  She  rejects 
in  principle  the  freedom  of  all  worships. 
Freedom  of  worship  is  in  itself  an  evil."^ 
Devivier,  speaking  of  liberty  of  conscience, 
liberty  of  the  press,  liberty  of  education, 
says:  "They  are  false  in  principle.  The 
Catholic  religion  alone  is  true  and  binding 
upon  all  men,  and  this  religion  is  identified 
with  the  Roman  Catholic  Church."  He 
adds :  "Neither  the  church  nor  the  state  can 
be  taxed  with  intolerance  and  tyranny  when 
they  seek,  as  they  did  in  the  Middle  Ages  to 
regulate  the  exercise  of  the  human  will,  and 
to  diminish  for  men  the  facilities  for  evil  and 
thus  prevent  them  from  risking  their  happi- 
ness and  welfare."^  This  is  surely  ecclesi- 
astical paternalism  which  has  no  place  in 
modern  democracy  and  which  abhors  liberty 
of  conscience.  These  official  statements  of 
the  Roman  attitude  toward  the  free  exercise 
of  conscience  need  to  be  kept  in  mind  when 
Paulist  Fathers  tell  non-Catholics  that 
Roman  Catholicism  believes  in  the  exercise 
of  conscience. 

B/6id.,  p.  35. 


68       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

Now,  the  failure  to  give  the  conscience  of 
the  individual  full  liberty  leads  to  the. sub- 
stitution of  the  law  of  expediency  for  the 
law  of  moral  right.  Only  as  we  keep  the 
conscience  in  the  ascendency  and  grant  it 
freedom  to  press  its  persistent  question,  con- 
cerning every  proposition,  "Is  it  right?"  will 
we  be  saved  from  the  entanglements  of 
casuistry  which  are  fatal  to  wholesome 
moral  attitudes.  If  service  to  an  institution, 
however  worthy,  shall  come  to  be  regarded 
as  of  greater  value  than  obedience  to  the 
clear  demands  of  conscience,  then  the  rule 
of  expediency  masters  us.  This  is  the  point 
at  which  Romanism  endangers  our  moral 
heritage.  The  promotion  of  the  interests  of 
the  church  is  more  precious  to  her  than 
strict  obedience  to  .the  voice  of  conscience. 
Thus  while  she  probably  would  not  directly 
ask  an  individual  to  do  wrong  in  defense  of 
the  church,  yet  many  are  without  doubt  led 
to  this  course  in  practical  life  because  of  her 
teaching.    Take  a  few  illustrations. 

Among  the  advertisements  which  ap- 
peared in  Pittsburgh  newspapers  recently 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  69 

was  one  which  defended  the  doctrine  of  the 
infaUibihty  of  the  Pope  and  sought  to  make 
the  practice  of  ascribing  inerrancy  to  an 
individual  or  an  institution  appear  perfectly 
normal  in  the  common  practices  of  life.  An 
analogy  between  the  papacy  and  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  United  States  was 
drawn.  It  was  stated  that  the  Supreme 
Court  is  infallible.  This,  of  course,  is  entirely 
contrary  to  the  fact.  The  Supreme  Court  is 
final,  but  not  infallible,  and  there  is  a  vast 
difference  between  finality  and  infallibility. 
That  great  court  is  the  last  resort  in  law,  but 
it  has  never  claimed  to  be  infallible.  Indeed, 
it  practically  asserts  its  own  fallibility  in 
many  of  its  decisions,  for  often  one  third  of 
its  own  members  criticize  the  opinion  of  the 
two  thirds,  which  opinion  is  the  final  deci- 
sion. Lawyers  outside  the  court  by  no  means 
regard  it  as  inerrant  and  freely  agree  with 
its  minority  opinion,  but  all,  whether  in 
agreement  or  otherwise,  accept  its  majority 
decision  as  the  last  word  on  that  particular 
case.  The  finality  of  the  Pope  is  not  a 
serious  matter;  it  is  his  claim  to  infallibility 


60       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITx\GE 

that  causes  moral  damage.  This  claim  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  makes  for  itself, 
teaching  American  children  in  its  parochial 
school  catechism  that  "to  believe  the  Cath- 
olic Church  is  to  believe  God  himself."  No 
analogy  to  this  arrogant  assumption  ap- 
pears anywhere  in  human  institutions  of 
government  which  are  not  despotic.  It  is 
utterly  unfair,  then,  to  ascribe  to  our  great 
federal  court  of  last  appeal  an  attitude  of 
legal  arrogance  which  would  lead  it  to  pro- 
nounce even  its  unanimous  decisions  as 
utterly  inerrant  and  destitute  of  any  possi- 
bility of  legal  flaw.  Now,  we  contend  that 
to  advertise  to  the  world  that  the  claim  of 
Romanism  to  infallibility  is  precisely  paral- 
leled by  our  Supreme  Court  when  there  is 
not  a  vestige  of  analogy,  and  to  confuse  the 
popular  mind  by  a  subtle  disregard  of  the 
fundamental  distinction  between  finality 
and  infallibility,  is  to  be  governed  by  ex- 
pediency and  not  by  the  rule  of  conscien- 
tious right. 

Take  another  instance.  In  the  same  series 
of    advertisements    the    Roman    Catholics 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  61 

make  official  claim  that  one  of  the  sons  of 
their  church,  Camillas  by  name,  was  the 
founder  of  the  Red  Cross.  The  popular 
mind  would  immediately  conclude  that  this 
was  the  great  international  organization 
which  we  have  always  understood  was 
founded  by  Jean  Henri  Dunant,  of  Geneva, 
Switzerland,  who,  moved  by  the  unneces- 
sary suffering  which  he  witnessed  at  the 
battle  of  Solferino  in  1859,  started  an  agita- 
tion which  led  to  the  so-called  Geneva  Con- 
vention, out  of  which  the  Red  Cross  societies 
grew.  This  is  the  Red  Cross  which  Clara 
Barton  founded  in  its  American  form  and 
for  which  the  American  people  gave  so 
generously  and  so  cheerfully  during  the 
World  War.  Now,  we  are  told  that  the  real 
originator  was  an  obscure  Roman  Catholic, 
unknown  to  the  general  encyclopedias,  liv- 
ing in  the  latter  part  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
who  established  an  organization  for  the  care 
of  the  sick  and  the  poor.  Professor  Schaff, 
who  calls  attention  to  this  matter  and  who 
has  investigated  it  thoroughly,  says  that  he 
does  not  find  even  in  the  great  German  Ro- 


62       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

man  Catholic  Encyclopedia  any  intimation 
that  Camillas  was  connected  with  any  kind  of 
Red  Cross  organization,  or  that  he  ever  made 
any  provision  for  the  care  of  the  wounded  on 
battle  fields.  Here,  then,  is  an  attempt  to 
make  a  man  who  did  nothing  more  than 
organize  a  local  sick-benefit  order  and 
administer  local  charitable  relief  funds  the 
originator  of  the  present  international  and 
world-famous  Red  Cross  society.  The  law 
of  expediency  is  in  operation  again  rather 
than  the  law  of  conscientious  right.  It  is 
altogether  expedient  that  the  Roman 
Church  shall  have  the  credit  due  the  founder 
of  the  Red  Cross,  but  it  is  altogether  wrong 
that  the  popular  mind  should  be  confused 
and  filled  with  error  by  statements  which 
are  not  historically  sound. 

Take,  if  you  will,  the  condemnation  of  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  by  the 
late  Pope  Benedict  XV,  in  which  he  de- 
clared that  it  was  corrupting  the  morals  of 
young  men.  The  popular  impression  from 
such  an  oflScial  deliverance  was  that  the 
Association  was  really  damaging  the  moral 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  63 

life  of  manhood.  This,  of  course,  was  not 
the  thought  of  the  Pope,  for  he  could  not 
have  been  so  woefully  misinformed  as  to 
make  such  an  egregious  blunder.  What  he 
doubtless  meant  was  that  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  was  teaching  young 
men  to  think  independently,  to  study  ques- 
tions from  the  standpoint  of  conscientious 
determination  of  what  was  right,  and  there- 
fore leading  them  to  discount  the  claims  of 
the  Roman  Church  to  speak  as  the  voice  of 
God  in  morals  and  religion.  In  that  sense 
the  Association  was  and  is  assuredly  chang- 
ing the  mental  attitude  of  youth  in  such  a 
way  as  to  "corrupt"  pure  Romanism.  If  the 
Pope  had  said  just  that,  his  word  would 
have  little  effect  in  prejudicing  the  popular 
mind  of  uninformed  Romanism  against  the 
**Y."  That  would  have  been  the  course  of 
truth,  but  it  would  not  have  been  expedient 
for  Roman  Catholicism. 

Now,  we  maintain  that  the  failure  of 
Romanism  to  put  the  emphasis  on  the  free 
exercise  of  the  conscience  through  its  failure 
to  teach  that  the  insistent  question  of  the 


64       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

moral  nature,  "Is  it  right?"  must  be  heard 
above  all  inquiries  concerning  what  is  ex- 
pedient has  led  to  a  lowering  of  moral  stan- 
dards wherever  Romanism  has  held  sway. 
There  are  certain  lines  of  conduct  which 
Romanism  has  approved  in  the  past  and 
which  it  approves  to-day  to  which  Protes- 
tantism is  most  decidedly  opposed.  Take 
the  matter  of  persecution.  Rome  has  per- 
sistently taught  that  in  the  interest  of  its 
church  those  who  oppose  it  should  be  dealt 
with  severely.  Hence  she  has  a  long  record 
of  persecution.  Now,  we  are  well  aware  of 
the  fact  that  Rome  through  some  of  her 
modern  appeals  to  non-Catholics  denies  any 
torture  or  death  to  have  been  inflicted  by 
the  authority  of  the  church,  and  we  are  also 
aware  that  Protestantism  in  the  past  has  at 
times  been  guilty  of  persecution,  out  of 
which  fact  Romanists  make  the  largest 
capital.  But  let  us  examine  these  points. 
Let  us  see  whether  Rome  has  ever  oflicially 
authorized  persecution. 

Cardinal  Gibbons  in  his  'Taith  of  our 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  65 

Fathers,"  an  authorized  Roman  Cathohc 
pubheation,  says  that  in  all  of  his  reading  he 
has  not  found  that  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  has  officially  authorized  suffering  or 
death  in  the  case  of  conscientious  objectors 
to  the  Roman  Creed.  Surely,  the  Cardinal 
was  familiar  with  the  words  of  Pope  Leo  X, 
who  in  his  bull  condemning  Luther  in  1520 
declared  that  the  burning  of  heretics  was 
according  to  the  will  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  He 
must  have  known  that  Pope  Innocent  III 
in  1215  officially  instituted  the  Inquisition, 
that  Pope  Sextus  IV  sanctioned  the  Spanish 
Inquisition,  that  Pope  Paul  IV  was  at  the 
head  of  the  Roman  Inquisition.  Victor 
Duruy,  the  French  historian,  in  his  chapter 
on  "The  Catholic  Restoration,"  credits  four 
great  Popes — Paul  III,  Paul  IV,  Pius  V,  and 
Sixtus  V — with  saving  Italy  to  Roman 
Catholicism  after  it  had  lost  one  half  of  its 
empire  through  the  Reformation.  He  says: 
"As  individuals  were  executed,  likewise 
books  were  burned.  These  means  obstinately 
pursued  were  successful.  Roman  Catholi- 
cism was  saved  in  the  peninsula,  but  at  what 


66       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

a  price  !"^  But  when  Cardinal  Gibbons  comes 
to  the  Spanish  Inquisition  he  protects  the 
church  by  holding  Spanish  royalty,  and  not 
the  Roman  Church,  responsible  for  that 
refinement  of  cruelty.  He  seems,  however, 
to  forget  that  church  and  state  were 
most  perfectly  united  in  those  days  and 
whatever  the  state  did,  especially  for  the 
promotion  of  religion,  is  that  for  which  the 
church  must  bear  its  full  share  of  responsi- 
bility. If  Rome  did  not  approve  the 
cruelties  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition,  she 
should  at  least  have  openly  and  positively 
denounced  them,  but  do  we  find  any 
Pope  condemning  the  Spanish  king  for 
those  cruelties  as  Ambrose  condemned  the 
cruelties  of  Theodosius  in  the  fourth  cen- 
tury.^ If  the  Roman'  Catholic  Church  in  the 
sixteenth  century  was  the  same  true  church 
of  Christ  that  existed  in  the  fourth  century, 
why  did  not  the  reigning  Pope  rise  and 
openly  condemn  the  royal  inquisitor  and 
say,  as  did  Ambrose,  "If  you  imitate  David 


^  Duruy's  General  History  of  the  World,  Thomas  Y.  Crowell 
&  Co.,  publishers.     Review  of  Reviews.     Vol.  ii,  p.  328. 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  67 

in  crime,  imitate  him  in  repentance"?  When 
it  comes  to  the  massacre  of  Saint  Barthol- 
omew's Day  Cardinal  Gibbons  has  another 
way  of  excusing  the  Roman  Cathohc 
Church.  He  says  that  the  reason  the  Pope 
caused  a  Te  Deum  to  be  sung  when  he  heard 
of  the  slaughter  of  the  Protestants  on  that 
aw  f ul  night  in  Paris  was  because  he  thought 
it  was  simply  the  overthrow  of  traitors  who 
had  been  plotting  the  life  of  the  rightful 
ruler,  and  the  Pope  ordered  a  song  of  praise 
in  recognition  of  the  triumph  of  loyalty  over 
treason!  But  the  Cardinal  did  not  explain 
how  it  happened  that  in  addition  to  the 
song  of  praise  which  the  Pope  ordered  he 
also  required  that  a  medal  be  struck  off 
having  on  one  side  the  image  of  the  Pope 
and  on  the  other  a  representation  of  the 
destroying  angel,  with  the  words,  "Massacre 
of  the  Huguenots."  We  have  no  desire  to 
hold  humane  and  kind-hearted  Roman 
Catholics  responsible  to-day  for  what  their 
ecclesiastical  ancestors  did  in  darker  ages 
gone,  but  we  do  hold  them  responsible  for 
failing  to  acknowledge  the  colossal  crime 


68       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

which  the  church  committed  and  for  at- 
tempting to  so  explain  away  the  plain  facts 
of  history  as  to  make  it  appear  that  Rome 
was  perfectly  guiltless  of  persecuting  her 
opponents  even  unto  death.  We  are  forced 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  reason  why  her 
apologists  do  not  make  complete  acknowl- 
edgment of  her  grievous  fault  and  confess 
that  the  church  sinned  and  sinned  most 
shamefully,  is  that  she  still  holds  that  if  it 
should  appear  that  the  church  again  needed 
such  measures  to  defend  herself,  she  would 
be  justified,  even  in  this  enlightened  age,  in 
resorting  to  similar  practice.  When  we  hear 
one  of  her  apologists  saying  three  centuries 
after  the  Inquisition  that  ''Neither  church 
nor  state,  which  are  bound  together  upon 
the  basis  of  divine'  law,  recognizes  toler- 
ance," and  when  Joseph  Hergenrother, 
trusted  member  of  the  Vatican  and  author- 
ized Roman  Catholic  historian,  says,  "The 
authorization  of  every  form  of  worship  is  a 
grave  injustice  in  purely  Catholic  countries 
like  Spain  and  South  America,"  then  we 
have  reason  to  fear  that  Rome  has  not  yet 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  69 

repudiated  her  former  faith  in  the  efficiency 
and  moral  rectitude  of  persecution.  If 
authorization  of  differing  forms  of  worship 
is  a  "grave  injustice"  in  Roman  Cathohc 
countries,  then  why  may  she  not  use  the 
strong  hand  of  the  law  to  exclude  non- 
Catholics  who  worship  God  according  to  the 
dictates  of  their  own  conscience?  Indeed, 
we  are  not  left  to  inference  here.  Another 
defender,  Granderath,  says:  "The  principle 
that  she  possesses  the  power  of  outward 
punishment  the  church  naturally  cannot 
surrender.  Meanv^hile,  though  she  holds 
fast  her  principle,  in  applying  it  she  takes 
account  of  the  conditions  of  the  time."^  If 
this  be  correct,  perhaps  those  who  insist 
that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  utterly 
un-American,  since  she  does  not  grant  the 
right  of  every  man  to  worship  God  according 
to  the  dictates  of  his  own  conscience,  are 
not  as  rabid  on  the  subject  as  we  have  often 
supposed. 

But  what  about  Protestant  persecutions? 

^  Sacerdotalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  Henry  C.  Sheldon, 
p.  36.     Eaton  &  Mains. 


70       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

As  stated  above,  we  make  no  attempt  to 
deny  the  historical  facts  nor  apologize  in  any 
way  for  them.  We  insist  that  wherever  and 
whenever  Protestantism  undertook  to  pro- 
mote its  doctrines  or  advance  its  enterprises 
by  means  of  persecution,  it  sinned  with  a 
high  hand  against  humanity  and  God.  This, 
howevel*,  we  have  to  say  for  Protestantism, 
that  whenever  she  has  practiced  persecution 
she  has  stultified  herself.  She  has  had  no 
theory  which  has  been  fundamental  to  her 
claims  as  a  genuine  Christian  Church  which 
has  supported  any  of  her  persecuting  prac- 
tices. Luther  insisted  on  the  right  of  private 
judgment  and  direct  access  to  God.  He 
also  insisted  that  "it  is  contrary  to  the  will 
of  the  Spirit  that  heretics  should  be 
burned."  If,  therefore,  he  favored  the  perse- 
cution of  the  Jews,  as  is  claimed,  he  was  in- 
consistent with  himseK  and  acted  in  flat 
contradiction  of  the  Protestantism  for  which 
he  stood.  The  Puritans  of  New  England, 
not  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  persecuted  the 
witches  and  Roger  Williams  because  they 
still  held  to  the  anti-Protestant  theory  of 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  71 

the  right  of  the  church  to  use  the  temporal 
power  to  enforce  its  doctrinal  beliefs.  The 
Puritans  were  not  purged  of  the  poison  of 
high-church  Anglicanism  when  they  came  to 
America.  Anglicanism  had  never  utterly 
broken  with  the  Romish  theory.  Its  quarrel 
has  not  been  with  the  Roman  theory  so 
much  as  with  the  Roman  application  of  that 
theory.  Such  a  theory  led  the  Protestant 
Puritans  to  act  inconsistently  with  their  own 
Protestant  principles.  As  Protestantism 
purges  herself  of  every  vestige  of  the  Roman 
theory  and  comes  to  regard  the  church 
simply  a  means  to  an  end,  holding  that  the 
end  is  the  absorption  of  the  spirit  and  ethical 
power  of  Jesus  in  individuals  and  in  society, 
in  that  proportion  does  persecution  come  to 
be  abhorrent  to  the  Protestant  mind  and 
practically  impossible  of  practice.  Thus  is 
it  that  true  Protestantism  has  rebuked  the 
partial  Protestantism  of  John  Calvin.  He  it 
is  who  has  been  called  "The  Protestant 
Pope"  and  whose  severity  of  administration 
in  Geneva  led  to  the  saying,  "Many  more 
tears  have  been  shed  under  Calvin  than 


72       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

were  ever  shed  over  him."  Calvin  sanctioned 
the  execution  of  one  Michael  Servetus,  who, 
by  the  way,  was  a  patron  of  a  Roman 
Catholic  archbishop  for  twenty  years,  and 
whom  Roman  Catholicism  was  ready  to 
convict  on  the  very  evidence  which  John 
Calvin  furnished  against  him.  Servetus, 
however,  escaped  from  his  jailer  and  avoided 
Roman  Catholic  execution  for  his  heresy  by 
a  very  narrow  margin.  Then  he  came  to 
Geneva.  Calvin  accomplished  what  Rome 
tried  to  do  and  could  not.  We  have  no 
apology  whatever  to  make  for  Calvin  any 
more  than  we  would  have  had  for  Rome  if 
she  had  succeeded.  We  are  glad  that  modern 
Protestantism  has  inscribed  over  the  grave 
of  Calvin  its  own  protest  against  his  de- 
ficient Protestantism  in  the  following  words : 
"Huguenots  in  Geneva,  true  sons  of  the 
Reformation,  recognizing  the  benefits  of 
Calvin's  life  and  teachings,  hereby  repudiate 
his  crime,  which  was  the  crime  of  his  age." 
Thus  Protestantism  reveals  a  different  atti- 
tude toward  persecution.  We  submit  that 
the  moral  standards  of  Protestantism  grow- 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  73 

ing  out  of  a  recognition  of  the  right  of  every 
man  to  the  free  exercise  of  his  conscience 
are  higher  than  those  which  Romanism  can 
ever  have  while  she  distrusts  the  moral,  as 
she  does  the  intellectual  nature  of  man  and 
insists  that  he  cannot  be  trusted  with  free 
moral  exercise  but  must  be  guided  by 
authoritative  compulsion. 

In  conclusion,  we  look  at  the  general 
moral  conduct  which  Romanism  begets  in 
her  people.  It  is  no  slander  to  say  that 
countries  in  which  Romanism  is  supreme 
have  low  standards  of  living.  South  Amer- 
ica, Mexico,  Spain,  Austria,  and  France  have 
different  standards  of  moral  life  from  Eng- 
land and  America.  It  cannot  be  the  climate, 
nor  the  form  of  government,  nor  lack  of 
opportunity.  Rome  has  had  abundant 
chance  in  these  lands,  and  if  submission  of 
the  conscience  to  authority  rather  than  its 
free  exercise  produces  a  higher  type  of  moral 
life,  human  conduct  in  these  countries 
should  be  at  its  best.  On  the  contrary, 
Roman  Catholic  countries  are  sadly  illit- 
erate and  immoral.   In  some  parts  of  South 


741       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

America  illegitimacy  of  birth  runs  as  high 
as  fifty-seven  per  cent.  This  is  not  due  to 
any  inherent  immorality  in  the  people  but 
to  the  mercenary  spirit  of  Romanism,  which 
demands  high  fees  for  the  marriage  cere- 
mony and  tolerates  moral  laxity  rather  than 
ecclesiastical  irregularity.  In  Spain  when 
Rome  completely  controlled  the  educational 
system  sixty-eight  per  cent  of  the  population 
was  illiterate  and  in  Italy  the  illiteracy  ran 
as  high  as  ninety-three  per  cent.  When  the 
Italian  government  took  control  illiteracy 
was  reduced  one  half.  Rome  had  her  oppor- 
tunity with  France.  At  last  the  educational 
system  was  taken  from  her.  She  violently 
protested,  but  her  loss  of  control  benefited 
France  in  the  reduction  of  illiteracy  from 
fourteen  to  five  per  cent. 

In  Mexico  Romanism  has  been  in  power 
for  centuries.  Only  in  recent  years  has 
Protestant  influence  been  felt  in  the  slightest 
degree.  When  she  had  perfect  control  ninety 
per  cent  of  the  population  could  not  read 
nor  write,  and  even  to-day  Mexico  is  at 
least  sixty  per  cent  illiterate.    Indeed,  the 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  75 

educational  budgets  for  all  Latin  America, 
with  its  eighty-five  million  people,  are  not 
much  larger,  we  are  told,  than  for  the  one 
city  of  New  York,  which  has  less  than  six 
millions.  Illiteracy  and  immorality  go  hand 
in  hand.    No  one  expects  to  find  the  moral 
standards  of  Christian  civilization  in  South 
America.     There  libertines  and  renegades 
from  justice  expect  to  find  their  paradise. 
Why  should  this  be  so?  Roman  Catholicism 
has  been  in  South  America  longer  and  has 
had  much  greater  control  than  has  Protes- 
tantism in  North  America.     If  she  is  the 
only  authorized  Church  of  Christ  on  earth 
and  her  moral  teaching  is  according  to  the 
mind  of  God,  why,  then,  has  her  type  of 
Christianity    been    such  a  colossal  moral 
failure.^     The  low  moral  standards  of  the 
people   relate   themselves    directly    to   the 
Roman  Church.    A  Protestant  bishop,  ob- 
serving unusual  debauchery   on  a  church 
feast  day,  inquired  as  to  the  particular  reli- 
gious festival  which  was  being  observed,  and 
received  the  reply,  "This  is  the  feast  of  the 
Holy  Ghost"!    This  type  of  religion  lowers 


76       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

moral  ideals.  A  college  dean  in  Brazil  wrote, 
"It  is  with  great  sadness  that  I  witness  the 
steady  decrease  in  the  number  of  unselfish, 
idealistic,  genuine  men/'^ 

When  we  come  to  our  own  country  we 
find  that,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  there  are 
numbers  of  Roman  Catholic  people  who 
are  individually  high-minded  and  morally 
strong,  Romanism  as  such  does  not  bring  to 
us  moral  uplift.  We  desire  to  give  Roman 
Catholicism  credit  for  every  good  she  does, 
and  we  deplore  that  narrow  bigotry  which 
can  see  nothing  in  her  worthy  in  the  least  of 
praise,  but  with  all  charity  we  must  admit 
the  sad  fact  that  the  moral  forces  which  are 
struggling  to  make  Jesus  King  in  all  realms 
of  life  do  not  receive  any  decided  impetus, 
to  say  the  least,  when  Romanism  moves 
into  a  community.  How  much  of  Sabbath 
observance  is  promoted  by  Roman  Cath- 
olics? How  much  strength  is  given  by 
Romanism  to  the  cause  of  political  right- 
eousness when  decent  citizens  fight  corrupt 
political  organizations  and  try  to  elect  men, 

8  Eric  M.  North,  The  Kingdom  and  the  Nations,  p.  166. 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  77 

themselves  Roman  Catholics,  who  stand  for 
high  ideals  and  insist  that  Roman  philan- 
thropic institutions  shall  be  subject  to  the 
same  oflBcial  scrutiny  as  that  which  other 
denominations  cheerfully  accept?  How 
much  support  does  clean  government  re- 
ceive from  Romanism  in  such  a  crisis?  How 
were  movements  for  moral  uplift  of  young 
people  promoted  when  Sunday  night  enter- 
tainments were  provided  for  them  in  beer 
gardens,  where  liquor  freely  flowed,  before 
prohibition  came?  How  much  help  did  the 
cause  of  prohibition  receive  from  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  as  such?  There  were 
groups  of  Roman  Catholics  who  helped 
greatly,  and  noble  leaders  appeared  from 
time  to  time,  but  the  church  oflScially  and 
as  a  whole  hindered  rather  than  helped.  A 
Roman  Catholic  priest,  the  late  Father 
Thomas  McLoughlin,  of  New  Rochelle,  New 
York,  stated  publicly  in  our  hearing  that 
when  Archbishop  Ireland  asked  the  Pope 
for  his  blessing  on  the  Archbishop's  Total 
Abstinence  Society,  the  Holy  Father  said  to 
him,  "Do  you  mean  that  any  one  who  joins 


78       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

your  society  must  give  up  even  the  drinking 
of  wine?"  "Yes,"  said  Ireland,  "that  is 
what  it  means."  "Then,"  said  the  Pope,  "I 
should  think  a  person,  for  such  self-denial, 
should  have  some  kind  of  a  blessing."  Here 
was  the  papacy's  answer  to  total  abstinence. 
It  should  be  an  occasion  of  humiliation  to 
Rome  to  realize  that  in  the  greatest  moral 
reform  of  the  century  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  as  such  has  had  no  part,  and  that 
Protestantism  is  the  only  ecclesiastical  body 
that  deserves  any  credit  in  effecting  the 
legal  banishment  of  this  age-long  curse. 

We  conclude  where  we  began.  The  moral 
conduct  of  a  people  reflects  its  moral  educa- 
tion. Rome  teaches  that  the  conscience 
must  not  be  trained  to  independent  action. 
She  seeks  to  bear  the  moral  burdens  of  her 
people  and  thus  retards  their  moral  growth. 
Our  moral  heritage  lifts  the  conscience  to 
high  place  and  calls  upon  the  individual  to 
bear  his  own  moral  burden.  The  church  can 
aid  him  by  teaching  a  sound  moral  philos- 
ophy and  by  showing  the  moral  disintegration 
which  compliance  with  the  law  of  expediency 


THE  MORAL  HERITAGE  79 

brings.  To  preserve  that  moral  heritage  we 
must  guard  against  that  Jesuital  casuistry 
which  justifies  the  means  if  the  end  be 
worthy.  Such  faulty  moral  conceptions  may 
be  ours  in  spite  of  our  hatred  of  Jesuitism. 
Dr.  Frederick  H.  Wright,  pastor  of  the 
American  Church  in  Rome  and  connected 
with  a  Protestant  publishing  house,  was 
offered  a  manuscript  for  publication  by  an 
Italian  of  high  character  and  positive 
Protestant  convictions.  He  was  a  man  of 
decided  ability  and  the  manuscript  con- 
tained beautiful  stories  for  children  which 
had  high  literary  worth.  On  reading  it,  how- 
ever, it  was  discovered  that  it  was  shot 
through  with  Jesuitical  teaching.  It  repre- 
sented a  little  boy  protecting  his  sister  in  a 
brotherly  way,  but  always  with  some  false- 
hood which  resulted  in  benefit  to  the  girl. 
The  Protestant  publishers  told  the  author 
they  could  not  print  it  while  it  contained 
that  Jesuitical  moral  distortion.  The  author 
was  indignant  and  insisted  that  he  hated 
Jesuitism  and  its  teachings  as  much  as  the 
publishers.  He  was  led  at  last  to  see  that  he 


80       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

was  still  unconsciously  holding  to  the  false 
philosophy  of  Jesuitism  with  which  he  had 
been  indoctrinated  in  youth  while  he  had 
broken  utterly  with  the  system.  He  elim- 
inated the  objectionable  elements;  the  book 
published  was  among  the  best  in  the  litera- 
ture of  moral  education,  and  was  intro- 
duced into  the  government  schools  by  the 
minister  of  education. 

Thus  we  see  how  easily  we  may  hold  the 
false  moral  philosophy  of  Rome  while  we 
repudiate  Romanism.  There  must  be  care- 
ful guarding  at  this  point,  for  our  moral 
heritage  will  not  be  maintained  by  mere 
denunciation  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
but  by  a  humble  and  persistent  effort,  sup- 
ported by  divine  help,  to  avoid  repetition  of 
the  moral  blunders-  by  which  Rome  en- 
dangers the  moral  heritage  of  Protestantism 
and  of  free  America. 


Ill 

THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE  OF 
PROTESTANTISM 

Text:  "For  there  is  one  God,  and  one  mediator  between  God 
and  men,  the  man  Christ  Jesus." — 1  Timothy  2.  5. 

As  the  right  of  private  judgment  underlies 
the  intellectual  heritage  of  Protestantism 
and  liberty  of  conscience  the  moral  heritage, 
so  the  right  of  direct  access  to  God  is  the 
foundation  stone  of  our  spiritual  heritage. 
If  we  believe  that  man  can  approach  God 
directly  and  that  no  human  intermediary  is 
necessary  for  the  fullest  intimacy  of  the  soul 
with  God;  if  we  take  the  words  of  the  text 
to  mean  what  they  say  and  permit  no  inter- 
pretation   which   would   justify   a   human 
priest  coming  between  the  soul  and  the 
divine  Christ,  then  we  have  no  need  of  the 
elaborate  system  of  spiritual  ministration 
which  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  provides. 
The  confessional,  penance,  extreme  unction, 
purgatory,  as  well  as  the  Roman  attitude 

81 


82       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

toward  the  use  of  the  Scriptures,  all  rest 
upon  the  theory  that  man  needs  a  human 
intermediary,  that  he  cannot  know  God 
satisfactorily  if  he  approach  him  directly, 
and  that  the  divinely  appointed  way  is  by 
means  of  a  human  priest  who  is  clothed 
with  divine  authority  to  pronounce  forgive- 
ness of  sins  and  to  decide  whether  or  not  the 
soul  has  reached  a  state  of  acceptability 
with  God. 

Protestantism  rejects  this  view.  She  holds 
that  a  man  can  and  should  come  into  direct 
and  immediate  relation  with  God — that 
Jesus  Christ  is  the  one  Mediator,  and  that 
he  is  qualified  to  be  such  because  he  is  God 
incarnate.  Protestantism  refuses  to  believe 
with  those  who  originally  promoted  the 
worship  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  that  the  deity 
of  Jesus  is  so  exalted  that  he  cannot  enter 
with  complete  sympathy  into  perfect  fellow- 
ship with  weak  and  sinful  men  as  could 
someone  who  is  entirely  human  and  yet 
occupies  a  unique  relation  to  the  Incarnate 
Christ  as  did  his  earthly  mother. 

This  is  one  of  the  fundamental  principles 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE  83 

of  Protestantism,  and,  like  those  which  we 
have  previously  considered,  requires  a  cer- 
tain degree  of  explanation.  Because  Protes- 
tants reject  a  human  intermediary,  we  do 
not  on  that  account  disregard  all  human 
agencies  in  bringing  about  a  direct  and 
personal  relation  of  the  soul  with  Christ. 
There  are  several  things  in  this  connection 
which  seem  to  be  similar,  but  which  are 
essentially  distinct.  There  is  a  decided  dif- 
ference between  introduction  and  interven- 
tion. When  you  introduce  one  person  to 
another  you  bring  together  those  who  have 
been  strangers.  You  do  not,  however,  stand 
between  them  after  they  are  introduced,  but 
retire  and  leave  them  to  relate  themselves 
directly  to  each  other.  The  Protestant 
Church  believes  in  the  human  agency  of 
introduction,  and  its  ministers  and  laymen 
are  busy  bringing  people  to  Jesus  as  Andrew 
brought  Peter.  They  introduce  their  friends 
to  Christ,  as  without  this  process  of  human 
introduction  multitudes  would  never  know 
him.  But  when  the  introduction  has  been 
eflfected,  it  is  the  duty  of  the  one  so  intro- 


84       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

ducing  to  retire  and  let  the  individual  intro- 
duced deal  directly  with  his  God.  The 
Roman  priest  not  only  introduces,  but  inter- 
venes. He  stands  between  the  soul  and 
Christ.  It  is  true  that  he  teaches  the  com- 
municant to  pray  more  or  less  directly  to 
God,  but  in  the  great  transactions  of  re- 
pentance and  forgiveness  he  insists  that  he 
must  remain  as  the  intermediary,  dictating 
the  penance  and  informing  the  penitent 
when  he  is  actually  forgiven  of  God.  Not 
only  so,  but  the  Romanist  confounds  inter- 
pretation with  intervention.  Protestants 
believe  that  the  human  minister  and  layman 
should  interpret  God  to  men,  hence  all  the 
agencies  of  preaching  and  teaching  which 
Protestantism  provides,  but  interpretation 
is  a  very  different  thing  from  intervention. 
The  interpreter  at  best  is  only  a  temporary 
expedient  and  anticipates  direct  communi- 
cation. Recently  there  came  to  Pittsburgh 
a  distinguished  Japanese.  He  was  the  guest 
at  dinner  on  one  occasion  of  a  group  of 
citizens  and  Sunday-school  workers.  After- 
dinner  addresses  were  made  in  his  honor 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE         85 

which  he  could  understand  only  through  an 
interpreter,  for  he  could  not  speak  a  word  of 
English.  At  length  he  responded  to  the 
felicitations  of  the  speakers  and  spoke  for 
half  an  hour  in  Japanese.  We  could  not 
understand  a  word  he  said.  Then  his  inter- 
preter arose  and  for  another  half  hour  told 
us  what  the  guest  had  been  saying.  That 
interpreter  came  between  us  and  the  dis- 
tinguished visitor  and  in  a  sense  was  for  us 
an  intermediary.  But  that  mediation  was 
only  temporary.  All  present  realized  that  it 
was  most  unsatisfactory  and  could  never 
remain  as  a  permanent  means  of  communi- 
cation. If  we  were  to  have  long  continued 
and  satisfactory  fellowship  with  that  man, 
he  must  either  learn  to  speak  English  or  we 
must  learn  to  speak  Japanese.  So  with  the 
interpretation  of  God  to  the  soul  of  man  by 
the  agency  of  the  church.  In  so  far  as  she 
may  interpret  God  to  man  and  in  that  way 
stand  between  God  and  the  soul,  Protestant- 
ism insists  that  the  process  is  wholly  tem- 
porary and  is  intended  to  operate  only  until 
the  individual  learns  the  medium  of  com- 


86       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

munication  with  the  Divine;  then  the  in- 
terpreter, in  so  far  as  he  has  been  an  inter- 
mediary, must  retire,  else  his  presence  will 
be  an  impertinence.  We  repeat  that  every 
agency  of  Protestantism  which  may  be  cited 
as  a  parallel  to  the  confessional — personal 
interviews  with  converts,  the  private  in- 
struction given  by  class  leaders,  Sunday- 
school  teachers  and  pastors — must  be  inter- 
preted in  the  light  of  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  Protestantism,  namely,  that  the 
human  agency  operates  alone  for  purposes 
of  introduction  and  interpretation,  but 
never  in  the  sense  of  permanent  interven- 
tion. When  the  man  has  once  found  Christ, 
all  intermediaries  must  depart.  The  agencies 
of  the  church  are  useful  to  him  without 
doubt,  knowledge -bf  God  and  his  way  he 
must  seek,  and  the  church  is  ordained  to 
help  him  there,  but  all  must  be  regarded  as 
merely  contributory  to  that  intimate,  per- 
sonal fellowship  of  man  with  his  Maker,  of 
the  soul  with  his  Saviour  which  receives 
such  rapturous  emphasis  in  the  Bible  and  in 
the  literature  of  the  saints.    It  would  have 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE  87 

been  an  insult  to  have  proposed  human 
intervention  between  David  and  his  Divine 
Shepherd  in  that  experience  of  which  he 
sings  when  the  Lord  is  his  Shepherd  and  he 
knows  he  cannot  want.  The  earthly  life  of 
our  Lord  reveals  an  intimacy  of  personal 
fellowship  with  his  disciples  which  suffered 
no  breakage  when  those  men  came  to  know 
him  as  their  Lord  and  their  God.  Paul  deals 
directly  with  Jesus  and  is  evermore  seeking 
to  lead  the  people  of  his  time  into  a  fellow- 
ship just  as  intimate  and  just  as  directly 
personal  as  was  his.  The  saints  of  primitive 
Christianity  would  have  scorned  the  sugges- 
tion of  a  priestly  intermediary.  Listen  to 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  a  Christian  Father 
of  the  second  century  whom  Jerome  pro- 
nounced the  most  learned  of  men.  He  pre- 
sents in  his  great  hymn  "Shepherd  of  Tender 
Youth"  the  thought  of  direct  access  to  God 
which  the  early  church  counted  so  precious. 
He  sings: 

"Thou  art  the  great  High  Priest; 
Thou  hast  prepared  the  feast 
Of  heavenly  love; 


88       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

While  in  our  mortal  pain 
None  calls  on  thee  in  vain, 
Help  thou  dost  not  disdain, 
Help  from  above." 

Even  when  we  come  down  to  the  Dark  Ages 
we  find  the  saints  who  shine  as  stars  in  the 
midnight  gloom,  show  that  light  comes 
through  direct  touch  with  God.  In  his  great 
hymn,  "Jesus,  Thou  Joy  of  Loving  Hearts" 
Bernard  of  Clairvaux  speaks  the  language 
of  direct  approach  of  the  soul  to  God: 

"Thy  truth  unchanged  hath  ever  stood; 
Thou  savest  those  that  on  thee  call; 
To  them  that  seek  thee,  thou  art  good, 
To  them  that  find  thee,  all  in  all." 

Protestantism  insists  on  this  right  of 
direct  access  to  God  which  has  yielded  such 
precious  fruit  of  spiritual  experience  and 
conduct  and  at  this  point  comes  into  colli- 
sion with  Roman  Catholicism.  In  making 
this  contention  we  are  dealing  with  a  vital 
principle  and  not  simply  with  a  particular 
form  of  religious  devotion  which  might  be  a 
matter  of  personal  taste  or  educational 
preference.   Much  is  being  said  to-day  con- 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE         89 

cerning  the  evil  of  religious  intolerance  and 
with  the  condemnation  of  it  we  are  in 
heartiest  accord.  A  local  newspaper  quoted 
recently  on  its  front  page  the  words  of  one 
Napoleon  Hill,  who  says,  "If  we  must  give 
expression  to  intolerance,  we  should  not 
speak  it,  but  write  it — write  it  on  the  sands 
near  the  water's  edge."  He  says  that  in- 
tolerance is  the  greatest  sin,  and  he  hopes 
that  when  he  gets  to  heaven  he  will  find  no 
Jews  nor  Gentiles,  no  Catholics  nor  Prot- 
estants, but  only  human  souls  and  brothers. 
Mr.  Hill  and  his  friends  might  charge  us 
with  intolerance  in  speaking  as  we  do  on 
these  disputed  themes,  but  our  contention 
is  that  in  so  speaking  we  are  working  by 
another  method  toward  the  same  goal  of 
broad  charity  which  he  seeks.  To  get  rid  of 
intolerance  we  must  eradicate  the  roots  as 
well  as  trim  the  branches.  In  insisting  on 
the  right  of  direct  approach  to  God  we  main- 
tain that  we  are  seeking  to  destroy  a  tap- 
root of  intolerance.  Intolerance  is  promoted 
not  only  by  those  who  practice  it  but  by 
those  who  suffer  it.    Intolerance,  like  other 


90       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

crimes  of  despotism,  has  gone  when  its 
victims  have  refused  to  suffer  it.  Let  us  ask 
why  have  men  endured  it?  The  answer  is, 
because  of  certain  advantages  which  they 
felt  the  promoters  of  intolerance  could  alone 
provide,  and  so  great  were  those  advantages 
that  men  were  willing  to  pay  the  price 
which  the  intolerant  exacted.  This  is  true 
to-day  in  industrial  realms.  There  are 
workingmen  who  have  endured  the  intol- 
erance of  certain  capitalists  because  only  by 
such  endurance  could  they  keep  their  posi- 
tions and  have  steady  work.  They  felt  the 
possession  of  steady  employment  was  worth 
the  price  of  submission  to  intolerance.  The 
same  is  true  if  we  reverse  the  situation. 
Labor  organizations  when  in  control  of  a 
situation  have  often  been  intolerant  to 
employers,  and  many  a  manufacturer  or 
builder  has  smarted  beneath  the  require- 
ment of  labor  leaders,  yet  has  endured  the 
smart  rather  than  suffer  a  strike  which 
would  have  crippled  his  business.  The  point 
is  that  many  advantages  accrue  to  men  at 
the  hand  of  the  intolerant,  and  for  the  sake 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE         91 

of  those  advantages  people  submit  to  radical 
wrongs.  One  way  to  correct  this  intolerable 
situation  is  to  remove  those  advantages 
from  the  hand  of  the  intolerant.  Once  let 
men  see  that  they  have  no  advantage  to 
gain  in  submitting  to  the  lash  of  despotism, 
and  they  will  rise  and  refuse  to  suffer  further. 
Now,  Rome  has  always  had  it  in  her 
power  to  promote  and  maintain  intoler- 
ance. She  has  always  taught  her  people 
that  it  is  of  immense  spiritual  advantage  to 
obey  her  commands.  She  has  thoroughly 
imbued  the  minds  of  her  communicants 
with  the  idea  that  the  power  of  spiritual 
life  and  death  was  in  her  hand.  She 
has  insisted  that  she  had  power  to  reach 
into  the  invisible  and  lay  hold  on  God  and 
that  she  could  reach  into  the  invisible  of  a 
man's  soul  and  control  his  spiritual  relations 
with  God.  This  is  the  meaning  of  the  con- 
fessional. The  priest  hears  the  confession 
and  determines  what  type  of  penance  will 
bring  the  soul  a  state  of  acceptability  with 
God.  When  the  penance  has  been  performed 
acceptably  to  the  priest,  then  he  professes  to 


92       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

be  able  to  reach  into  the  invisible  and  ascer- 
tain how  God  feels  toward  the  soul  of  that 
penitent,  and  his  priestly  absolution  or 
refusal  to  absolve  is  the  direct  message 
from  God  whom  he  alone  has  been  able  to 
reach.  Extreme  unction  rests  on  the  same 
assumption  of  spiritual  advantage  to  the 
individual.  The  priest  hurries  to  the  death- 
bed of  a  communicant,  not  to  pray  with  him 
and  give  him  spiritual  comfort  only,  but  to 
do  something  for  him  in  relation  to  God  and 
to  the  unseen  world  which  he  claims  cannot 
possibly  be  done  for  him  outside  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church.  So  when  a  man  dies,  the 
same  hold  on  the  unseen  in  its  relation  to 
the  departed  soul  is  asserted  by  Rome.  She 
still  has  her  hand  on  the  spiritual  life  of  the 
individual,  and  until' friends  of  the  departed 
provide  certain  masses  those  friends  are  told 
that  the  departed  cannot  come  to  a  satis- 
factory spiritual  state  even  though  his  spirit 
has  passed  from  earth.  Now,  here  is  a  series 
of  tremendous  advantages  which  Rome  pro- 
fesses to  give  to  her  obedient  children.  Once 
let  them  believe  that  she  holds  these  spir- 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE         93 

itual  advantages  in  her  hand,  and  men  will 
endure  extreme  intolerance  rather  than 
imperil  them.  The  religious  life  is,  after  all, 
most  precious  to  men,  and  they  do  so  highly 
esteem  spiritual  good,  in  spite  of  all  seeming 
indifference  and  even  hostility  to  it,  that 
they  have  revealed  a  readiness  to  pay  almost 
any  price  for  what  they  believed  to  be 
genuine  religious  advantage.  Here  is  Rome's 
strangle  hold  on  her  people.  They  have 
been  taught  in  the  most  impressionable 
years  of  life  that  she,  and  she  only,  has  in  her 
hand  the  power  of  spiritual  life  and  death. 
Believing  that  she  can  save  their  souls  or 
condemn  them  to  everlasting  death,  men 
who  exercise  independence  regarding  every 
other  question,  will  bow  their  souls  at  this 
shrine  of  spiritual  autocracy,  and  Roman 
Catholics,  on  whom  their  church  has  but  a 
slender  hold  during  health  and  life,  will,  on 
the  approach  of  death,  return  to  what  they 
conceive  to  be  the  ark  of  spiritual  safety. 
Often  a  pastor  has  been  surprised  to  find 
Roman  Catholics  who  attended  his  church 
services,  evidently  preferring  them  to  their 


94       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

own,  go  back  to  Romanism  when  death 
drew  near  and  seek  the  ministrations  of  a 
priest,  lest  their  soul  should  suffer  as  it 
crossed  the  dark  valley. 

We  submit,  then,  that  if  Rome  had  always 
shown  the  spirit  of  kindness  and  had  been 
most  tender-hearted  in  her  dealing  with 
friend  and  foe;  if  she  had  utterly  eschewed 
persecution  and  repudiated  all  disposition  to 
use  the  temporal  power  for  the  promotion  of 
her  religious  enterprises,  even  then  she 
would  be  a  despotism,  though  a  very  benev- 
olent one,  and  thus  out  of  sympathy  with 
our  American  institutions.  But  when  we 
know  that  Rome  has  by  her  official  deliver- 
ances and  her  authorized  acts  displayed  the 
spirit  of  an  intolerant  despot ,  justifying  her- 
self on  the  ground"  that  she  must  show  no 
leniency  toward  those  whom  she  conceives 
to  be  wrong,  then  we  see  that  intolerance 
with  her  is  not  an  accident  nor  the  practice 
of  a  few  unauthorized  agents  who  have 
falsely  spoken  in  her  name,  but  belongs  to 
the  very  essence  of  her  teaching  concerning 
the  relation  of  the  soul  to  God. 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE         95 

Now,  we  have  reached  the  very  core  of 
Protestantism.  The  ground  of  Luther's 
protest  was  spiritual.  He  had  personally 
come  into  direct  relation  to  God  through 
justifying  faith.  He  found  he  had  no  need  of 
the  elaborate  system  of  intervention  be- 
tween God  and  the  soul  which  was  practiced 
by  Rome.  In  the  light  of  this  new  experience 
he  went  forth  and  protested  against  many 
abuses  in  conduct  which  were  practiced  in 
the  name  of  the  church  and  in  which  protest 
he  expected  to  be  supported  by  the  Pope 
himself.  It  was  an  occasion  of  great  grief 
when  he  found  that  he  had  to  resist  the 
Pope.  He  had  been  an  ardent  advocate  of 
the  papacy.  He  says,  "I  was  then  a  monk 
and  a  mad  papist,  ready  to  murder  any 
person  who  denied  obedience  to  the  Pope." 
His  position  of  protest  was  taken  only  after 
deep  heart-searching  and  at  great  cost  to 
himself.  He  says,  "O  with  what  anxiety  and 
labor,  with  what  searching  of  the  Scriptures 
have  I  justified  myself  in  conscience  in 
standing  up  alone  against  the  Pope!"  It  was 
a  great  blow  to  him  to  discover  that  the 


96       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

moral  irregularities  against  which  he  pro- 
tested were  countenanced  by  the  Pope,  but 
still  greater  to  find  that  the  papal  teaching 
concerning  the  soul's  relation  to  God  was 
contrary  to  the  Scriptures,  to  the  experience 
of  the  saints,  and  to  the  teaching  of  the 
primitive  church. 

Now,  this  assumption  of  spiritual  control, 
like  her  position  on  the  right  of  private 
judgment  and  the  liberty  of  conscience,  is 
one  which  Rome  must  hold  if  she  shall 
maintain  her  system.  Let  her  cease  for  a 
generation,  even  a  decade,  to  teach  that  she 
has  control  of  the  souls  of  men;  let  her 
tolerate  independent  and  free  approach  of 
the  soul  to  God  and  the  consequent  lack  of 
necessity  for  penance  and  extreme  unction; 
let  her  teach,  as  does  Protestantism,  that 
the  spiritual  ministrations  of  the  church  are 
only  for  the  edification  and  comfort  of  the 
souls  of  men,  but  do  not  represent  an  actual 
power  to  determine  the  spiritual  status  of 
the  individual,  and  the  Roman  system  as  it 
now  stands  will  disintegrate. 

Since,  then,  this  doctrine  of  spiritual  con- 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE         97 

trol  through  authorized  intervention  is  so 
vital  to  Romanism,  let  us  see  on  what 
grounds  it  rests.  There  are  three  realms  in 
which  Rome  professes  to  find  justification. 
The  first  of  these  is  the  realm  of  Scripture. 
She  quotes  certain  passages  from  the  New 
Testament  and  interprets  them  as  giving 
her  this  spiritual  authority.  The  first  and 
chief  of  these  are  the  passages  in  Matthew 
and  in  John  concerning  "binding"  and 
"loosing"  and  the  remission  of  sins.  Jesus 
said  to  his  disciples,  "Whatsoever  ye  shall 
bind  on  earth  shall  be  bound  in  heaven,  and 
whatsoever  ye  shall  loose  on  earth  shall  be 
loosed  in  heaven."  Again,  on  the  first  Easter 
Sunday  evening,  when  Jesus  met  with  his 
disciples,  he  said,  "Whose  soever  sins  ye 
remit,  they  are  remitted  unto  them;  and 
whose  soever  sins  ye  retain,  they  are  re- 
tained." Now,  the  Roman  Catholic  inter- 
pretation of  these  words  is  that  Jesus  was 
here  committing  to  the  Roman  Church  as 
it  now  stands  the  exclusive  right  to  pro- 
nounce forgiveness  of  sins.  The  claim,  of 
course,   is  that  Jesus   was  giving  to  the 


98       OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

apostles  as  the  ofl&eial  head  of  the  church 
this  right  which  was  to  be  passed  on  to  their 
successors,  and  as  Rome  claims  exclusive 
rights  in  apostolic  succession,  she  maintains 
that  she  forgives  sin  to-day  by  authority 
divinely  conferred  on  her  at  that  time. 
Of  course,  there  is  here  that  same  logical 
leap  for  which  Rome  is  famous  by  which  she 
ignores  all  rules  of  evidence  and  substitutes 
unwarranted  assumption  for  proof.  There 
is  not  the  remotest  evidence  that  Jesus  had 
a  church  organization  of  any  kind  in  mind 
when  he  thus  spoke,  and  it  is  a  wild  flight  of 
the  imagination  to  suppose  that  he  was 
prophetically  looking  at  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic Church  as  it  is  to-day  and  was  singling 
it  out  from  all  the  other  churches  of  Chris- 
tendom,  with  their  vast  numbers  and  record 
of  at  least  equal  Christliness,  and  saying 
that  this  particular  denomination  of  Chris- 
tians, and  this  alone,  should  have  the  right 
to  forgive  sins.  If  Rome  interpreted  these 
words  to  mean  that  all  Christian  churches 
were  meant  by  Jesus,  we  would  not  accept 
such  a  view,  but  when  she  says  that  the 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE         99 

Master  meant  to  single  her  out  and  give  to 
her  the  exclusive  privilege  of  forgiving  sin, 
the  proposition  is  so  utterly  untenable  that, 
had  it  not  gathered  to  itself  a  certain  aroma 
of  sanctity,  it  would  long  since  have  been 
rejected  as  sacrilegious  or  positively  ridicu- 
lous. There  is  even  no  evidence  that  Jesus 
was  speaking  to  the  future  church  at  all. 
He  was  speaking  only  to  his  followers  con- 
cerning their  right  to  represent  him  in  the 
organization  of  a  church.  "Binding"  and 
* 'loosing"  were  familiar  terms  in  such  con- 
nection. But  even  if  they  were  here  author- 
ized to  become  the  official  teachers  of  his 
doctrine  and  organizers  of  his  church,  there 
is  no  intimation  that  he  would  pass  over  to 
them  his  own  forgiving  prerogative.  Fur- 
ther, it  is  reasonable  to  conclude  that,  as 
they  were  charged  with  the  founding  of  the 
first  church  organization,  their  commission 
related  to  that  particular  task  and  would 
expire  with  their  death.  In  any  case,  it  is 
against  all  reason  to  believe  that  Jesus  was 
here  passing  over  to  a  little  group  of  his 
followers  his  own  right  to  deal  directly  with 


100  OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

the  souls  of  men.  If  that  were  what  he 
meant,  the  apostles  certainly  did  not  so 
understand  him,  for  they  were  continually 
referring  penitent  persons  directly  to  him 
for  the  settlement  of  the  soul's  problems. 
Peter  on  the  Day  of  Pentecost  tells  the 
inquirers  to  repent  and  be  converted  in 
order  that  their  sins  may  be  blotted  out. 
He  does  not  assume  to  blot  them  out.  Paul 
tells  the  Philippian  jailer  to  believe  on 
Jesus  and  he  will  be  saved.  He  does  not 
pretend  to  personally  retain  or  remit  sins. 
He  is  not  intervening  between  the  jailer  and 
Christ,  but  simply  pointing  out  the  way  of 
salvation,  as  any  layman  might  do.  John 
says  that  if  we  confess  our  sins,  he  is  faithful 
and  just  to  forgive  us  our  sins.  The  plaia 
meaning  is  that  anyone  may  confess  directly 
to  Christ  and  find  forgiveness.  No  one 
would  ever  have  thought  of  reading  into  it 
the  implication  of  an  intervening  priest  ex- 
cept for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  a  theory. 
Indeed,  the  whole  spirit  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment is  a  protest  against  the  thought  of  a 
human  intermediary.  The  system  of  priestly 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE        101 

intervention  in  Old  Testament  times  is  sup- 
planted "by  the  new  and  living  way." 
Christ  is  now  the  great  High  Priest.  Men 
may  come  boldly  to  the  throne  of  grace.  The 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  proclaims  in  nearly 
every  line  the  doctrine  of  the  priesthood  of 
believers.  For  a  human  priest  to  stand  be- 
tween the  believer  and  Christ  is  to  copy 
the  Old  Testament  and  to  revive  the  sys- 
tem which  has  been  completely  "done 
away."  "And  every  priest  standeth  daily 
ministering  and  offering  oftentimes  the  same 
sacrifices,  which  can  never  take  away  sins: 
but  this  man,  after  he  had  offered  one 
sacrifice  for  sins  forever,  sat  down  on  the 
right  hand  of  God.  .  .  .  For  by  one  offering 
he  hath  perfected  forever  them  that  are 
sanctified."  Hence  follows  the  comforting 
exhortation  which  is  made  possible  only  by 
an  utter  elimination  from  the  gospel  plan  of 
the  ministrations  of  an  intervening  human 
priest.  Listen  to  its  emphasis  of  the  personal 
right  of  the  individual  to  come  directly  to 
God:  "Having  therefore,  brethren,  bold- 
ness to  enter  into  the  holiest  by  the  blood  of 


102  OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

Jesus,  by  a  new  and  living  way  which  he 
hath  consecrated  for  us,  through  the  veil, 
that  is  to  say  his  flesh;  and  having  an  high 
priest  over  the  house  of  God;  let  us  draw 
near  with  a  true  heart  in  full  assurance  of 
faith."  It  would  be  difficult  to  conceive  of 
words  more  plainly  declaring  the  complete 
rejection  of  the  priestly  system  of  human 
intervention  in  the  soul's  discovery  of  and 
fellowship  with  its  divine  Lord.  If  those  men 
who  heard  Jesus  say,  "Whose  soever  sins  ye 
remit,  they  are  remitted"  had  understood 
him  to  mean  that  they  were  to  establish  a 
system  of  priestly  intervention  such  as 
Romanism  maintains  to-day,  then  the  New 
Testament  as  we  have  it  would  never  have 
been  written  and  a  church  founded  by*- 
apostles  so  believing  would  have  denied  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  a  place  in  the  canon. 
Moreover,  any  interpretation  of  the 
Master's  words  which  makes  them  to  mean 
that  only  eleven  men  and  their  successors 
should  have  the  right  to  pronounce  divine 
forgiveness,  is  in  direct  opposition  to  the 
spirit  the  Master  continually  displayed.  He 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE       lOS 

was  evermore  condemning  a  rigid  literalness 
and  a  mechanical  formalism.  He  positively- 
refused  to  be  shut  up  in  spiritual  matters  to 
any  ecclesiastical  system.  The  form  was 
nothing  with  him;  the  substance  was  every- 
thing. He  was  constantly  finding  men  and 
women  outside  ecclesiastical  regularity  who 
were  better  than  those  who  were  within.  He 
insisted  that  strict  observance  of  prescribed 
ceremonialism  could  not  save  a  man.  He 
said  he  would  not  be  able  to  recognize  many 
who  had  prophesied  in  his  name  and  in  his 
name  cast  out  devils,  because  their  spirit 
was  not  right.  How,  then,  can  we  think  of 
such  a  Teacher  passing  over  for  all  time  to  a 
little  group  of  men  an  authority  in  the  for- 
giveness of  sins  which  he  himself  would  no 
longer  exercise,  so  that  no  one  could  be  for- 
given, however  worthy,  unless  he  had  the 
seal  of  this  little  group  or  its  authorized 
successors  .f^  If  the  Roman  interpretation  is 
true,  we  are  shut  up  to  the  conviction  that 
Jesus  actually  divested  himself  of  the  for- 
giving prerogative  and  bestowed  it  on  those 
few  apostles  and  their  successors.    If  Rome 


104  OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

once  granted  that  Jesus  might  forgive  sins 
without  using  the  apostles  and  the  Roman 
Church,  then  her  whole  system  would  fall, 
for  she  would  have  to  admit  that  in  Protes- 
tantism Jesus  might  forgive  men  directly 
even  though  in  Romanism  he  forgives  them 
only  through  priestly  intervention.  This 
would  remove  all  the  exclusiveness  which 
belongs  to  the  Roman  system  and  would 
cause  it  to  disintegrate.  We  maintain,  then, 
that  there  is  not  the  least  warrant  in  the 
New  Testament  for  the  supposition  that 
Jesus,  when  he  spoke  to  the  apostles  about 
remitting  and  retaining  sins,  intended  to 
give  even  them  the  exclusive  right  of  for- 
giveness much  less  that  he  intended  to  con- 
fine that  right  to  the  Roman  Church  or  to 
any  other  particular  church  for  its  exclusive 
exercise. 

But  the  theological  aspect  of  this  assump- 
tion is  equally  opposed  to  the  Roman 
theory.  The  accepted  theological  view  of 
God  represents  him  as  a  Spirit  dealing  with 
the  spirits  of  men.  God  is  regarded  as 
omniscient.    He  searches  the  reins  and  the 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE        105 

hearts  of  men.  Here,  then,  comes  a  penitent; 
he  feels  the  burden  of  sin  and  seeks  forgive- 
ness. When  he  comes  to  the  priest  his 
sincerity  has  to  be  put  to  the  test.  The 
priest  professes  no  supernatural  penetration 
into  the  soul  of  the  suppliant.  The  penance 
imposed  is  the  test.  If  the  penitent  performs 
the  penance  required,  the  priest  concludes 
that  he  is  sincere  and  then  pronounces  him 
forgiven.  Here  two  elements  enter  which 
do  not  accord  with  Christian  theology. 
There  is  the  element  of  time.  Why  should 
God,  who  knows  the  human  heart  and  who 
is  a  Father,  delay  his  pardon  of  a  repentant 
soul  until  a  priest  has  had  time  to  put  that 
penitent  to  a  test.f^  The  test  is  required  only 
because  the  priest  is  human  and  thus  devoid 
of  omniscience  which  the  great  High  Priest 
possesses.  Why  should  God  be  supposed  to 
restrain  his  fatherly  eagerness  to  forgive  his 
repentant  son  simply  to  accommodate  the 
slowly  moving  priest.^  But  there  is  also  the 
element  of  fallibility.  The  priest  does  not 
know  whether  the  communicant  is  sincere 
or  not.  He  tests  him  by  penance.  That  test 


106  OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

may  not  discover  the  real  status  of  the  soul. 
Many  a  man  has  done  penance  whose  heart 
is  not  sincere.  The  priest,  however,  cannot 
discover  this  and  is  Hable  to  be  deceived. 
But  acting  on  his  best  judgment  he  thinks 
the  suppHant  genuine  and  says  "I  absolve 
thee."  Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  is  not 
absolved.  The  priest  and  the  church  have 
forgiven  him,  but  God  has  not  done  so.  The 
whole  matter  then  reverts  back  to  the  direct 
relation  of  the  soul  to  God.  Where  the 
penitent  is  sincere  and  the  priest  has  not 
made  a  mistake,  God  forgives  and  the  priest 
is  unnecessary.  Where  the  priest  is  mistaken 
and  pronounces  absolution,  the  man  has  not 
been  forgiven  and  the  church  has  uninten- 
tionally, but  nevertheless  in  reality,  pro- 
nounced a  lie  in  the  name  of  God.  In  order 
to  make  priestcraft,  at  its  best,  harmonize 
with  theology,  we  must  eliminate  its  dis- 
tinctively Christian  view  of  the  Divine  and 
look  upon  God  as  possessed  of  those  pagan 
characteristics  which  made  him  subject  to 
human  manipulation  and  attributed  to  him 
the  weaknesses  of  faulty  man. 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE       107 

But  when  we  come  to  the  rational  an- 
alogies by  which  Roman  Catholic  teachers 
attempt  to  defend  the  practice  of  priestly 
intervention,  we  find  that  they  are  equally 
unsatisfactory.  We  quote  again  from  Father 
Conway's  Paulist  Lectures  to  non-Catholics 
since  they  represent  the  most  plausible  in- 
terpretations of  Romanism.  The  failure  of 
Rome  to  promote  direct  dealing  of  the  soul 
with  God  is  justified  by  citation  of  cases  in 
common  life  where  the  indirect  method  is 
employed.  A  case  is  supposed  where  the 
President  of  the  United  States  should  learn 
of  irregularities  in  the  Philippine  Islands 
and  commission  twelve  men,  clothed  with 
full  judicial  powers,  to  go  over  and  inves- 
tigate. In  this  case  those  men  would  be 
authorized  to  act  for  the  President,  and 
those  whom  they  would  adjudge  guilty 
would  be  recognized  as  guilty  by  the  United 
States;  likewise  those  acquitted  would  be 
declared  innocent  just  as  truly  as  if  the 
President  himself  were  there  in  person.  Now, 
the  fallacy  of  this  argument  lies  in  the  use 
of  an  imperfect  analogy.    The  analogy  be- 


108  OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

tween  the  President  of  the  United  States 
and  the  Divine  Being  fails  at  the  point  of 
supernatural  powers.  The  President  sends 
a  commission  to  investigate  and  act  because 
he  is  ignorant  of  the  situation  and  cannot 
leave  the  White  House  to  personally  attend 
to  the  matter.  God  needs  no  such  commis- 
sioners as  the  priests  presume  to  be,  since  he 
himself  knows  all  the  facts  better  than  any 
ecclesiastical  commissioners,  and  he  is  pres- 
ent, dealing  directly  with  the  individual, 
when  any  question  of  guilt  or  innocence 
arises. 

Again,  argument  for  priestly  intervention 
is  made  by  an  analogy  of  the  army  general 
and  the  private  soldier.  The  question  is 
asked,  *'Why  does  not  a  soldier  report  for 
duty  directly  to  the- Commanding  general?" 
The  answer  is  that  it  is  not  the  duty  of  a 
commanding  general  to  receive  individual 
reports  of  private  soldiers.  No  general  was 
ever  appointed  to  that  high  office  and  then 
assigned  to  camp-gate  duty,  where  he  might 
check  up  the  return  of  soldiers  who  might 
have  been  off  on  leave.    That  is  the  task  of 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE        109 

a  sergeant  or  some  other  subordinate  officer. 
But  the  forgiveness  of  sins  is  not  a  subor- 
dinate task,  it  is  the  divine  prerogative  of 
the  Almighty,  and  for  him  to  assign  such  a 
task  to  a  subordinate  would  be  for  him  to 
surrender  his  high  office  of  Judge  and 
Saviour.  The  analogy  utterly  fails  when  it 
compares  God's  exclusive  right  of  forgive- 
ness with  an  inferior  task  to  which  a  high 
official  could  not  give  himself  without 
dereliction  of  duty. 

Likewise  the  analogy  fails  between  a 
governor  and  a  tax-collector  for  the  same 
reason.  Father  Conway  asks,  "Why  does 
not  a  citizen  pay  his  taxes  directly  to  the 
governor  of  his  State?"  The  plain  answer 
is  because  the  governor  is  elected  to  be  a 
governor  and  not  to  be  a  tax-collector.  When 
the  citizens  elect  a  man  as  governor  they 
have  not  the  remotest  suspicion  that  he  will 
devote  his  time  to  collecting  taxes.  That  is 
no  part  of  the  gubernatorial  function.  He 
will,  of  course,  have  general  supervision  of 
the  financial  transactions  of  the  State,  but 
the  voters  expect  him  to  appoint  a  local 


no     OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

internal  revenue  collector  and  not  perform 
the  duties  of  that  office  himself.  The  Ro- 
manist does  not  seem  to  be  able  to  see  that 
forgiveness  of  sins  is  a  superior  and  not  a 
subordinate  task.  The  opponents  of  Jesus 
raised  at  least  once  a  righteous  inquiry  when 
they  asked,  "Who  can  forgive  sins  but  God 
alone.'*"  And  Jesus  accepted  their  challenge 
when  he  forgave  sins  as  evidence  of  his 
deity.  For  him  to  delegate  this  exclusively 
divine  function  to  a  human  being  would  not 
be  the  assignment  of  a  subordinate  task  to 
a  subordinate  officer,  but  it  would  be  the 
transference  of  a  divine  prerogative  to  a 
mere  man. 

Now  the  spiritual  heritage  of  Protestant- 
ism is  a  firm  belief  in  the  direct  access  of  the 
soul  to  God  and  in  forgiveness  of  sins  as  an 
attribute  of  God  which  he  cannot  delegate 
to  a  man.  Consequently,  Protestantism  has 
no  place  in  its  creed  or  theology  for  a  human 
intermediary.  It  opposes  spiritual  media- 
tion not  only  because  it  believes  it  utterly 
contrary  to  the  New  Testament,  but  also 
because    of    the   practical    evils    which    it 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE        111 

generates.  The  whole  trend  of  Christian 
progress  is  away  from  the  idea  of  an  inter- 
mediary. Superstition  is  a  rehc  of  the  theory 
of  intervention.  Omens  and  signs  and  doc- 
trines of  devils  are  fostered  by  the  notion 
that  there  are  subordinate  intermediaries 
between  God  and  human  life.  Popular 
superstitions  grow  on  this  root.  People 
hesitate  to  look  at  the  moon  over  the  left 
shoulder  lest  it  indicate  impending  evil.  The 
midnight  wail  of  a  house  dog  is  regarded  as 
an  advance  messenger  announcing  the  ap- 
proach of  death.  Fortune-tellers  and  the 
spiritualistic  frauds  who  "peep  and  mutter" 
are  all  of  the  nature  of  intermediate  forces 
between  the  Source  of  spiritual  power  and 
the  human  soul.  How  grandly  these 
wretched  superstitions  are  swept  away  as 
soon  as  we  stress  the  glorious  doctrine  of 
Jesus  that  God  as  loving  Father  comes  into 
closest  and  most  immediate  relation  with 
the  individual.  "Even  the  hairs  of  your 
head  are  all  numbered."  "Your  Father 
knoweth  that  ye  have  need  of  all  these 
things."    "Lo!  I  am  with  you  alway."    "I 


112     OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

will  not  leave  you  comfortless;  I  will  come 
to  you."  "Let  not  your  heart  be  troubled, 
neither  let  it  be  afraid."  These  sublime 
statements  of  the  immediacy  and  imma- 
nence of  God  banish  the  superstitious  folly 
that  God  would  use  the  moon  or  the  house 
dog  or  the  spiritualistic  faker  as  a  medium 
of  communication  between  himself  and  his 
loved  child.  The  loving  mother  will  not  per- 
mit a  competent  and  sympathetic  nurse  to 
come  between  her  and  her  child.  How  much 
less  will  God,  whose  love  passeth  the  love 
of  women,  tolerate  the  intervention  of 
superstitious  and  erratic  media  between 
himself  and  his  own! 

Not  only  does  superstition  follow  on  the 
heels  of  spiritual  intervention,  but  an  un- 
wholesome secrecy  is  also  developed.  Rome 
has  a  standing  quarrel  with  freemasonry, 
and  at  least  one  ground  of  its  opposition  is 
that  masonry  requires  secrecy  of  its  mem- 
bers. But  Rome  seals  the  lips  of  all  her 
priests  and  excuses  them  in  withholding 
even  knowledge  of  crime  which  the  state 
should  possess.    Freemasonry  is  not  a  con- 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE       113 

fessional  in  any  sense,  and  her  secrets  are 
not  those  of  human  conduct  and  law  viola- 
tion such  as  Rome  receives  and  carefully 
conceals,  but  those  of  mere  regulations  of  an 
organization  which  anyone  may  know  who 
becomes  a  member.  The  confession  of 
wrongdoing  in  the  ear  of  a  church  which 
promises  never  to  divulge,  does  not  lead 
toward  that  openness  and  moral  illumina- 
tion for  which  Jesus  was  always  contending. 
The  Master  insisted  that  truth  leads  to  the 
light  and  that  there  is  nothing  secret  that 
shall  not  be  made  manifest.  The  secretive 
spirit,  the  disposition  to  enshroud  life  in 
dark  mystery,  the  hatred  of  public  view  and 
the  love  of  sheltering  dark  where  shrewd 
manipulations  may  be  effected  without  fear 
of  pitiless  publicity  are  not  productive  of  a 
sound  morality  nor  a  healthy  spiritual  life. 
Protestantism  seeks  the  light  and  disparages 
all  agencies  of  darkness.  Her  insistence  on 
the  right  of  every  man  to  know,  on  the  right 
of  every  conscience  to  assert  itself  and  call 
to  its  bar  all  processes  of  life,  and  its  open 
profession  of  allegiance  with  Him  who  is  the 


114.     OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

Light  of  this  world  and  with  whom  is  no 
darkness  at  all,  make  it  utterly  unsym- 
pathetic with  the  kind  of  secrecy  which 
Roman  Catholicism  begets  and  fosters. 
Take  a  concrete  case.  Gipsy  Smith  in  a 
recent  evangelistic  sermon  told  of  an 
awakened  conscience  with  which  he  was 
called  to  deal.  In  an  after  meeting  he  found 
a  woman  in  great  spiritual  agony.  He  told 
her  there  must  be  some  wrong  which  she  was 
not  willing  to  acknowledge.  She  said  there 
was,  and  then  told  him  that  she  had  been  a 
false  witness  in  a  famous  court  case  wherein 
her  testimony  had  ruined  the  reputation  of 
an  innocent  man.  The  Gipsy  told  her  that 
she  must  make  acknowledgment  and  restitu- 
tion. She  said  she  could  not  bear  the  shame 
it  would  involve.  But  he  said  to  her,  "What 
am  I  to  do.f^  You  have  told  me;  I  cannot 
retain  a  guilty  silence  and  let  this  innocent 
man  go  on  bearing  a  moral  reproach."  At 
last  through  prayer  and  conference  she  was 
brought  to  a  state  of  willingness  and  then 
to  a  state  of  personal  peace.  The  acknowl- 
edgment was  made,  the  man  was  publicly 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE       115 

and  legally  acquitted  of  blame,  and  a  victory 
for  righteousness  recorded  in  heaven  and  on 
earth.  Now,  suppose  that  confession  had 
been  made  to  a  Roman  Catholic  priest,  what 
would  have  resulted?  That  woman,  while 
she  might  have  suffered  penance  and  re- 
ceived at  length  announcement  of  Rome's 
forgiveness,  might  still  have  left  that  moral 
stigma  on  the  innocent  man  and  the  weight 
of  injustice  would  have  rested  on  the  courts 
and  the  community.  The  priest  could  never 
have  assumed  the  high  level  of  moral  recti- 
tude and  have  declared,  as  did  the  Gipsy, 
"I  cannot  remain  silent  and  share  your 
guilty  secret."  It  is  not  necessary  to  say 
that  the  moral  progress  of  the  world  de- 
mands that  everywhere  the  attitude  of  the 
Gipsy  prevail  and  that  the  course  officially 
required  of  the  priest  makes  for  every  kind 
of  retrogression.  This  heritage  of  light  and 
moral  rectitude  which  despises  that  moral 
shielding  which  begets  moral  weaklings, 
must  be  maintained  and  promoted  if  we  are 
ever  to  rid  the  world  of  its  social,  commer- 
cial,   industrial,    political,     and    religious 


116     OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

wrongs  and  pave  a  path  of  spiritual  sunlight 
for  Him  who  is  the  brightness  of  his 
Father's  glory. 

We  close  this  series  of  discourses  with  an 
emphasis  of  the  constructive  note  which  we 
have  tried  to  sound  all  through.  We  can 
only  drive  out  darkness  with  light  and  only 
truthful  affirmations  can  drive  out  noisome 
negations.  Over  against  Rome's  elaborate 
system  of  intervention  we  desire  to  place  in 
clear  light  the  glorious  directness  of  an 
experimentally  authenticated  gospel.  Each 
Roman  Catholic  institution  or  sacrament 
founded  on  the  principle  of  spiritual  media- 
tion has  its  counterpart  in  Protestantism 
founded  on  the  principle  of  direct  approach 
to  God.   Look  at  these. 

Here  is  the  confessional.  Many  Romanists ^ 
find  spiritual  comfort  therein  which  is  not 
to  be  condemned,  but  over  against  the  con- 
fessional and  whatever  peace  it  may  bring 
we  place  the  rich  experience  of  justification 
by  faith  through  direct  access  to  God  by 
Jesus  Christ,  which  Protestantism  has  pro- 
claimed and  experienced  through  the  cen- 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE        117 

turies.  Charles  Wesley  came  to  justifying 
faith  when  he  came  to  know  Christ  through 
full  surrender  of  himself  directly  to  the 
Saviour  and  went  out  with  a  new  song  in  his 
heart  which  God  had  directly  placed  there 
and  which  prompted  him  to  half  a  century 
of  singing  which  has  charmed  the  hearts  of 
millions  since  his  day.  The  hymnody  of  the 
confessional  is  certainly  not  large,  to  say 
the  least.  In  other  words,  men  have  not 
found  so  rich  and  joyous  a  religious  expe- 
rience through  confession  to  an  earthly 
priest,  obedience  to  his  demands  for  pen- 
ance, and  the  reception  of  his  forgiving 
pronouncement,  "I  absolve  thee,"  as  they 
have  through  direct  approach  to  God  and 
simple  faith  in  Jesus  Christ  the  great  high 
priest.  The  exaggerated  figures  which 
Charles  Wesley  uses  in  a  stanza  said  to  have 
been  written  to  describe  his  joy  in  forgiveness 
through  justifying  faith  stand  out  in  contrast 
with  the  almost  stoical  reception  of  forgive- 
ness through  the  confessional.   Wesley  sings : 

"Fully  justified  I,  I  rode  on  the  sky, 
Nor  envied  Elijah  his  seat. 


118     OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

My  soul  mounted  higher  than  a  chariot  of  fire. 
The  moon,  it  was  under  my  feet." 

Or  take  the  doctrine  of  penance.  Protes- 
tantism knows  nothing  of  penance  chiefly 
because  it  rejects  the  artificial  view  of  good 
works  which  Rome  maintains.  We  never 
set  men  to  doing  things  simply  to  test  their 
sincerity,  and  therefore  we  have  no  place 
for  pilgrimages  and  artificial  mortifications 
of  the  flesh  which  have  no  value  in  them- 
selves. We  believe  that  worthy  conduct  is 
so  valuable  and  there  is  so  little  time  for  the 
doing  of  all  that  should  be  done,  that  we 
never  ask  men  to  perform  the  intrinsically 
useless  tasks  of  penance.  We  believe  that 
genuine  faith  in  Jesus  which  brings  a  man 
to  immediate  relation  with  his  Lord  will^ 
stimulate  in  him'  a  desire  to  imitate  his 
Master  in  going  about  doing  good.  We  are 
concerned  with  the  spirit  in  which  a  man 
does  good  deeds.  We  count  it  of  little  worth 
for  him  to  give  and  toil  and  suffer  simply 
that  he  may  earn  the  approval  of  the 
church,  if  in  his  soul  there  be  no  moving 
impulse  to  fellowship  with  his  loving  Lord 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE       119 

in  the  supreme  task  of  building  his  king- 
dom. We  therefore  tend  to  promote  a  more 
joyous  practice  of  the  art  of  Christian  Hving. 
Christian  hving  comes  to  be  a  joyous  pro- 
cedure. The  Protestant  learns  not  only  to 
sing  with  Paul  and  Silas  when  in  the  agonies 
of  persecution,  but  he  cultivates  the  more 
natural  joy  which  comes  from  viewing  all 
life  as  a  vast  field  of  service  wherein  he 
walks  in  personal  and  immediate  fellowship 
with  his  Master  day  by  day  as  a  colaborer 
with  God. 

The  Bible  thus  becomes  to  the  Protestant 
a  handbook  of  life  to  which  he  goes  each  day, 
not  as  to  a  catechism  to  learn  stiff  doctrines, 
but  as  to  a  fountain  from  which  he  may  take 
refreshing  draughts  of  the  water  of  life.  The 
Bible  is  a  devotional  book  to  him.  He  com- 
mits a  passage  to  memory,  not  that  he  may 
recite  it  in  a  confirmation  class  or  a  con- 
fessional, but  that  he  may  "meditate  on  it 
day  and  night"  for  the  strengthening  of  his 
new  life  in  Christ  which  came  when  he  be- 
came a  new  creature  through  justifying 
faith.    Hence  he  must  have  a  copy  of  the 


120     OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

Bible  for  himself.  He  must  read,  mark, 
learn,  and  inwardly  digest  its  truth;  and 
while  he  does  not  despise  the  instruction 
which  the  church  and  the  Bible  class  may 
give,  yet  that  instruction  will  be  of  little 
value  unless  he  be  a  constant  and  devo- 
tional reader  of  the  Book.  Now,  while 
Roman  Catholics  in  this  country  are  per- 
mitted to  read  the  Bible,  it  is  no  use  denying 
that  the  personal  perusal  of  the  Book  has 
never  been  encouraged  by  Rome,  and  in 
multitudes  of  instances  has  been  positively 
prohibited.  There  is  nothing  in  all  Roman- 
ism corresponding  to  the  British  or  the 
American  Bible  Society,  and  the  activities 
of  these  agencies  for  the  encouragement  of 
individual  reading  of  the  Scriptures  is  de- 
cidedly opposed  by  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  Protestantism  offers  the  open 
Bible,  without  note  or  comment,  and  has 
been  enabled  to  raise  up  a  church  of  Bible 
readers.  Its  saints  are  not  found  handling  a 
cross  nor  counting  beads,  but  reading  and 
meditating  upon  the  inspired  Word  of  God 
until  their  experience  voices  itself  in  the 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE        121 

language  of  Holy  Writ,  "O  how  love  I  thy 
law!  .  .  .  Thy  word  is  a  lamp  unto  my  feet, 
and  a  light  unto  my  path." 

Nor  has  Protestantism  need  of  the  sacra- 
ment of  extreme  unction.  This  is  not  simply 
a  means  of  spiritual  comfort  to  the  dying, 
it  is  an  insistence  on  the  need  of  the  priestly 
intermediary  for  the  soul's  triumphant  exit 
from  this  world.  The  Protestant  minister 
goes  also  to  the  deathbed,  but  he  goes  only 
to  pray  for  and  with  the  dying  and  help 
them  to  find  Christ  as  an  immediate  Pres- 
ence to  the  soul.  If  they  have  already  found 
him,  he  need  only  administer  spiritual  com- 
fort, and  in  any  case  the  Protestant  pastor 
regards  the  ministrations  at  the  deathbed  of 
far  less  value  than  those  bestowed  in  health 
when  the  mind  is  unclouded  by  the  confu- 
sion of  physical  break-down.  The  priest  is 
more  eager  for  deathbed  ministration  than 
the  Protestant,  not  because  more  sym- 
pathetic, but  because  of  the  demands  of  his 
theory.  That  theory  insists  that  serious 
spiritual  loss  will  ensue  to  saint  as  well  as 
sinner  unless  the  priest  can  intervene  be- 


122     OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

tween  that  soul  and  God  just  before  it 
passes  into  eternity.  The  Protestant  is 
eager  that  every  man  shall  know  Christ 
personally  before  that  hour,  and  then  he 
needs  no  one  but  his  Divine  Redeemer  as 
the  night  of  death  draws  nigh. 

Protestantism  gives  to  the  world  its 
triumphant  deathbeds,  not  because  of  any 
priestly  ministrations,  but  because  it  leads  its 
people  into  a  conscious,  personal  acquaint- 
ance with  Him  who  has  abolished  death 
and  brought  life  and  immortality  to  light 
through  the  gospel.  It  teaches  its  men  to  so 
live  that  when  death  draws  nigh  they  may 
have  direct  access  to  the  Great  High  Priest 
whether  or  not  there  be  any  earthly  friend 
near  by  to  pray.  It  teaches  them  to  sing: 

"Thy  stroke,  O  death,  terror  of  the  world,  I  hail; 
'Twill  snap  my  bonds  and  set  me  free. 
Free  to  wing  the  vasty  realms  of  being. 
Inbreathe  the  freshest  air  of  life 
And  bask  me  in  the  sunlight  of  eternal  day." 

Its  all-suflSciency  for  life  as  well  as  death  is 
Jesus,  whom  the  soul  may  reach  directly 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE       123 

and  immediately.      Thus   Charles  Wesley 
sings  as  he  approaches  the  dark  valley: 

"In  age  and  feebleness  extreme, 
Who  shall  a  helpless  worm  redeem? 
Jesus,  my  only  joy  thou  art. 
Strength  of  my  failing  flesh  and  heart. 
O  let  me  catch  a  smile  from  thee 
And  drop  into  eternity.'* 

Thus,  discarding  all  necessity  for  an  inter- 
vening priest  at  death,  Protestantism  cer- 
tainly has  no  need  for  any  such  after  pas- 
sage into  the  other  world.  Purgatory  is 
the  attempt  of  the  Roman  Church  to  hold 
the  souls  of  men  in  its  power  after  they 
have  left  this  world.  It  is  perhaps  the 
least  reasonable  of  all  Rome's  doctrines. 
To  suppose  that  God  defers  all  direct 
dealing  with  the  souls  of  men,  even  after 
they  have  passed  into  the  other  world,  until 
a  human  priest  has  adjusted  certain  trans- 
actions with  the  friends  of  the  departed 
on  this  side  the  grave  would  be  absurd  if 
it  were  not  so  serious.  How  contradictory 
that  a  soul  passed  into  God's  unseen  world 
must  await  a  message  which  God  is  sup- 


124     OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

posed  to  send  back  to  an  earthly  priest 
before  it  can  come  to  direct  dealings  with 
the  Saviour!     If  there   should   be  such   a 
place  as  purgatory,  surely  God   would   be 
nearer  to  it   than  a  priest   living  on  this 
earth.     What  reason  can  justify  belief  in 
the  theory  that  God,  to  whom  the  soul  has 
gone,  cannot  deal  with  that   soul  directly 
and  dispose  of  his  case  until  human  priests 
on  this  side  have  received  word  from  God, 
acted  in  his  stead  and  sent  word  back  again 
to  that  soul  in  the  unseen?  Nothing  but  the 
exigencies  of  a  theory,  or  the  purpose  to 
retain  control  over  men  in  this  life  by  pre- 
tending to  keep  that  hold  even  after  death, 
could  ever  justify  reasonable  men  in  believ- 
ing such  a  preposterous  and  contradictory 
doctrine.      How  far  removed  is  the  New 
Testament    conception!      There    we   read, 
"Absent  from  the  body,  present  with  the 
Lord";    "To-day  shalt  thou  be  with  me  in 
paradise" — ^not    purgatory.       Surely,    that 
dying  thief  had  no  human   intermediary. 
Only  the  Saviour  and  himself  were  in  that 
transaction,  and  though  he  was  deep  dyed 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE       125 

in  sin  the  Master's  forgiveness  and  infusion 
of  new  life  sufficed  to  save  him,  and  there  is 
not  the  remotest  suggestion  of  purgatorial 
purging  but  immediate  entrance  into  par- 
adise. It  is  this  view  of  death  which 
Protestantism  maintains.  It  is  this  saving 
triumph  over  the  fear  of  death  which 
Protestantism  has  been  instrumental  in 
promoting.  Thus  Wesley,  the  Protestant, 
says  as  he  draws  near  the  close  of  life,  "The 
best  of  all  is,  God  is  with  us."  Thus  Cook- 
man,  the  Protestant,  sings  as  the  sun  goes 
down,  "Sweeping  through  the  gates,  washed 
in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb."  Thus  Moody, 
the  Protestant,  replies  when  asked  how  it  is 
with  him  in  the  hour  of  death,  "Earth  is 
receding,  heaven  is  opening;  God  is  calling, 
I  am  going  home."  These  men  needed  no 
extreme  unction,  they  needed  no  purgatory; 
they  had  done  no  penance,  but  their  lives 
had  blossomed  with  good  deeds  and  their 
only  confessional  was  the  place  of  prayer 
where  they  did  "acknowledge  and  bewail 
their  manifold  sins  and  wickedness"  directly 
to  Him  who  is  able  to  save  unto  the  utter- 


im    OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

most  all  that  come  unto  God  by  him,  for 
they  had  found  the  one  Mediator  between 
God  and  man,  the  Man  Christ  Jesus. 

The  need  of  Protestantism  to-day  is  that 
she  shall  understand  the  importance  to  the 
world  of  her  own  promotion  and  that  she 
shall  openly  defend  herself.  It  is  far  easier 
to  criticize  Protestantism  than  it  is  to 
criticize  Romanism.  The  Roman  Church 
severely  rebukes  all  her  critics.  For  this 
reason  she  has  scarcely  any  within  her  own 
ranks,  and  she  succeeds  in  silencing  many 
critics  without.  As  a  consequence,  many  of 
the  critics  of  the  Roman  system  are  those 
whose  courage  has  degenerated  into  a  kind 
of  rabid  rashness,  and  as  they  have  but  little 
reputation  for  intellectual  poise  to  lose,  they 
say  many  things  which  a  more  reputable 
but  equally  strong  antagonist  of  Rome 
would  hesitate  to  utter.  Many  a  man,  there- 
fore, who  sees  the  folly  and  un-Americanism 
of  the  Roman  system,  hesitates  to  speak  be- 
cause he  prizes  so  highly  his  own  reputation 
for  moral  sanity  and  brotherliness.  Not 
only  so,  but  Protestantism  has  a  genius  for 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE       127 

independent  criticism  and  finds  great  satis- 
faction in  pointing  out  her  own  faults.  While 
this  is  wholesome,  it  may  lead  us  to  excess. 
Like  any  other  good  it  is  subject  to  per- 
version. Consequently  the  deficiencies  of 
Protestantism  receive  excessive  advertising 
while  her  fundamental  excellencies  are  often 
obscured.  Just  reflect  on  the  condemnation 
which  Protestantism  received  at  the  hand 
of  Billy  Sunday.  Much  of  the  criticism  of 
individuals  and  churches  was  deserved,  but 
the  condemnation  as  a  whole  was  a  wild 
exaggeration.  The  critic  himself  was  a  loyal 
Protestant,  and  if  he  had  once  trained  his 
guns  of  fiery  invective  on  the  faults  of 
Romanism,  her  ecclesiastical  structure 
would  have  looked  like  the  cathedral  at 
Rheims  after  its  desecration.  But  he  did  not 
do  so.  It  was  often  remarked  that  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  was  the  only  thing 
he  did  not  criticize.  His  ministry  in  New 
York  city  was  received  by  multitudes  of 
Romanists.  They,  of  course,  heard  his  ring- 
ing gospel  messages,  but  they  also  heard  his 
condemnations  of  Protestant  ministers  and 


128  OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

church  members,  and  without  a  word  of 
suggestion  that  Rome  was  equally  incon- 
sistent, they  could  only  conclude  that 
Protestantism  was  very  much  of  a  failure 
to  say  the  least.  Lesser  evangelists  have 
pursued  the  same  course.  Nearly  all  mag- 
azine articles  and  public  addresses  breathe 
the  free  air  of  Protestant  inquiry  and  criti- 
cism and  the  total  impression  left  on  Roman 
Catholics  who  never  hear  their  own  church 
criticized  within  its  own  ranks  is  that 
Protestantism  is  a  broken  reed.  Moreover, 
there  has  been  a  fatuous  notion  in  the  minds 
of  many  popular  speakers  and  writers  that 
the  best  way  to  cure  Rome's  wrongs  is  to 
conciliate  her,  and  Protestant  ministers 
have  often  gone  out  of  their  way  to  laud 
Romanism  and  set  her  up  as  an  example  to 
Protestant  churches.  But  Rome  only  makes 
these  mistaken  brethren  her  dupes.  She 
publishes  their  conciliating  remarks  in  her 
attacks  on  Protestantism  and  by  implica- 
tion holds  these  men  up  to  ridicule  for  stay- 
ing in  a  church  which  is  so  far  below  the 
heights  which  Romanism  has  reached!    It 


THE  SPIRITUAL  HERITAGE       129 

is  futile  to  try  to  conciliate  Rome,  just  as  it 
is  useless  and  wicked  to  indulge  in  vitupera- 
tion and  slander.  What  is  needed  is  that  we 
shall  speak  the  truth  with  sanity  and  with 
soberness,  that  we  forsake  the  temporizing 
policy  of  timidity  whereby  we  have  con- 
demned Protestantism  with  faint  praise; 
that  we  honestly  acknowledge  the  indebted- 
ness of  American  freedom  of  mind,  of  con- 
science and  of  religion  to  Protestantism  and 
soberly  see  the  inherent  hostility  of  oflScial 
Romanism  to  such  liberty;  that  we  cease 
extenuating  Rome's  low  ideals  of  life  on  the 
ground  that  she  reaches  thereby  the  rougher 
elements  of  society  and  that  we  plant  our 
feet  firmly  on  the  truth  that  it  takes  the 
highest  to  really  reach  the  lowest;  that  we 
recognize  the  endeavor  of  Protestantism  to 
build  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth,  in  social, 
industrial,  and  political  realms,  while  we  see 
that  Rome  is  chiefly  occupied  with  building 
her  own  institution  and  getting  men  into 
another  world,  and  that,  finally,  while  we 
shall  cease  to  "see  red"  whenever  Romanism 
is  mentioned,  we  shall  come  to  see  that 


130  OUR  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

Protestantism  is  the  only  form  of  Chris- 
tianity which  enables  us  to  "see  white"  as 
we  search  among  the  dark  problems  of  the 
day  for  genuine  solution. 

We  have  no  desire  to  discount  whatever 
is  good  in  Romanism.  Her  belief  in  the  deity 
of  Jesus,  the  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures, 
and  the  atoning  work  of  the  Saviour  is  to 
be  commended.  We  differ  in  the  interpre- 
tations of  these  truths.  We  have  tried  in 
this  series  to  build  rather  than  to  pull  down, 
and  we  have  sought  in  our  condemnation  of 
what  we  feel  to  be  wrong  to  follow  the 
poet's  vision  of  the  "waster"  and  the 
"builder,"  praying  the  Great  Head  of  the 
church  that  soon  the  whole  dream  may 
come  to  be  true — 

"I  look,  aside  the  mist  has  rolled, 
The  waster  seems  the  builder  too; 
Upspringing  from  the  ruined  old 
I  see  the  new! 

"  'Twas  but  the  ruin  of  the  bad, 
The  wasting  of  the  wrong  and  ill; 
Whate'er  of  good,  the  old  time  had, 
Is  living  still." 


i'l'mi'nilli*'l°'°""'  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  01145  1616 


Date  Due 

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